


never hold it back

by iwishii



Series: you're with me, relax [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Car Sex, Domestic Abuse mentions, Drugs, Emotionally Repressed, Eudora lives fuck you, Feelings, Luther is so stupid bless him, M/M, Mates, Mpreg, Omega Verse, Omegaverse Biology, Omegaverse discrimination, Past Abortion, Period-Typical Sexism, Porn with Feelings, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Depression, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, don't mess with the Hargreeves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2019-11-27 07:50:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 43,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18191789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwishii/pseuds/iwishii
Summary: When news of Reginald's death reaches the scattered Academy, they quickly realise it's a bit too early to pop the champagne.Diego and Klaus have a lot unsaid to work through...Sequel to "taste of euphoria"





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a sequel to taste of euphoria, which I recommend you read first otherwise this AU might get confusing. 
> 
> They'll be flashbacks to times between the end of that fic and them meeting up now, as well as little snippets from Vanya's book. 
> 
> The characters reference the past forced abortion Reginald made Klaus go through without telling him but there won't be anymore of that in this story. 
> 
> It won't be a complete rewrite, there will be changes.

> _Father always gave the worst of his attentions to Ben, Klaus and Diego. I think Ben's ability disgusted him, he looked nauseated every time my brother's Horrors came out, and would become angry whenever Ben was hesitant to use them, but to my knowledge he never did anything more than that. For Diego, I think it definitely got worse after he presented as an Alpha. Father would claim it was defensive, saying that Alphas could be dangerous, but he never acted the same towards Allison, so I doubt that was the real reason. Diego was never allowed to be alone with myself or Klaus, as if he would ever hurt either of us. When Diego was a child our Father would shut him in a tank of water for hours on end to see how long his breath lasted, never finding the limit, and as horrible as that sounds and as much as I know that traumatised him, I think not being permitted to even touch Klaus anymore hurt him the most. Diego would stutter more when Klaus was in the room and I used to get scared that he'd try to push the limits again just to be closer, because the thought of seeing another horrible scar on Diego inflicted by our Father used to keep me up at night._
> 
> _As for Klaus, Father would shut him away constantly. Sometimes we wouldn't see him all day and night, and when we did he wouldn't be there in his mind, not really. It's no surprise to me that he turned to drugs as he did, not when our Father locked him in the crypt, and also locked him away in the attic every time his heat came along. Biannually from sixteen to nineteen, Klaus was shut in the attic, Ben sneaking up to keep him company, and Diego in the basement with Luther on guard duty._

* * *

 

Vanya was nervous to see them all again. The last time she'd run into Klaus he'd feigned being higher than he had been seconds before, and made a flimsy excuse to all but run off in the opposite direction. Not that she blamed him.

Allison had invited her to her wedding, but Vanya hadn't gone, not with knowing how she'd written about Allison's panic attacks and the time she taped her mouth shut: sobbing and hiding herself in her wardrobe. As for Luther and Diego, Vanya saw news reports about the former and was increasingly wary of a confrontation with the latter. She never believed for a second Diego would hurt her physically, not like Reginald thought he would, but verbal injuries were fair game with Two.

Sure enough, her brief pleasant reunion with Allison comes to a crashing halt when Diego slinks past and shoots her a foul glare.

"You shouldn't be here, not after what you did" He snaps, and Vanya tries to sink into the ground.

Her Alpha sister lets out a deep warning sound, one Diego returns with a hard poke in Vanya's direction.

"No, no do not take her side. What she wrote about? She had no right. All that other shit I could have maybe forgiven, but bringing my kid into it too? No. Our baby wasn't her book material"

Before she has a chance to say how sorry she is, Allison buts in with a snort. "You never had a kid Di... Oh. Um"

An excruciating silence follows when Allison realises what she said. Diego looks stricken and Vanya is trying to find something to say when Allison steps forward to reach out to Diego, apologies already falling from her lips.

He jerks away from her. "She had no right, and you h-h-had no right to say that either. Either of you bring it up again, especially around Klaus, you'll regret it I swear you will"

"Diego!" Allison calls after him as he bolts up the stairs, but it falls on deaf ears. She follows him up a few steps before stopping with a sigh, her hand hanging low. From the windows above the sunlight falls beautifully over her, and Vanya isn't sure if it's envy or something else that burns her cheeks when Allison drops to sit on the steps.

With only a moments hesitation, Vanya came to join her on the steps. "He'll forgive you, you didn't mean it. It was word vomit"

Allison cocks a brow at her. "Word vomit?" Vanya shrugs. "I shouldn't have said that, it was cruel and wrong. It just didn't register until I'd said it"

Vanya thought about putting a comforting hand on the other woman's shoulder, but opted against it. "Is um, is Klaus even here?"

If anyone was going to skip out on Reginald's funeral, Vanya figures it would be Klaus, but Diego sounded so sure Klaus was.

"Yeah, I found him in dad's study. Diego's probably gone to see him now" At the silent question, Allison flaps her hand. To Vanya's surprise, both Allison's wedding and mating bands are missing. Vanya could remember a tabloid article about the rings, how gorgeous they had been. "Oh um, I take it you've never bonded? Diego can smell Klaus, I'd bet all my money on it"

Vanya's eyebrows raise in surprise. "Wow. I'd heard mated scents were acute but I didn't realise you could smell each other from floors away"

Allison laughs, quiet. "Oh boy, yeah. It is potent. I can smell Patrick from a mile away, it's like a honing beacon: same for Claire"

The Omega squashes her resurfacing crush down, reminding herself that even though Allison's marriage and bond to her mate was practically nonexistent, her love for Luther was no doubt still under the surface. Subtly Vanya checks her watch, noting the hours still to tick by until her next dose, and bites down the urge to ask how the bond thing worked with couples divorcing. The bite was permanent and always would be unless the controversial studies into bond breaking turned anything up, but the era of Omegas and Alphas forcing themselves to stay together after love was lost had had very recently past, and although still uncommon Vanya knew Allison wasn't alone in parting from her mate.

The awkward silence after Patrick and Claire's names dropped is broken thankfully when Luther comes thundering down the stairs with his expression clouded with annoyance.

"Family meeting" Luther says when he passes them, pausing only to help Allison stand without offering a hand up to Vanya too. She looks up at the Beta like she's communicating with him through eye contact alone, and Vanya sighs as she gets up.

Yeah, any chance of something with Allison was just wishful thinking in her Omega brain.

* * *

 

He scents Klaus long before he sees him, he doesn't even have to be told where he is because the Alpha follows the aura like it's the easiest thing he's ever done. Diego has no idea what he's going to say when he gets to Klaus, whether he can even trust his voice, but the last time they came together for Klaus' heat the other hadn't even left a note. Not like all the previous times.

"Family meeting, now" One tells him as he shoulders past, but Diego doesn't listen and Luther doesn't stop to check if he had. Diego goes further through the house while Luther jogs off to the stairs.

When he opens the door to his old room Klaus is facing him, no doubt having scented him coming, and for a short while they take each other in. In Klaus' hands is one of Diego's old casual shirts Reginald cleared and hysterically wonders what the old fuck would think about how he and Klaus liked to dress how: both so far from Hargreeves mandated dress code.

Klaus has on a blazer and a skirt. No shoes, he never wore shoes. His make up is smoky, and Diego instantly misses the curls. He looks...

"Hey beautiful" Diego's mouth says, throwing out his first thought. The careful mask of flirtatious indifference on Klaus' face flickers and fades, his green eyes brightening genuinely.

Klaus drops the shirt and steps closer, practically floating. He was graceful in everything he did from moving around, choosing his words or running from those who cared about him. Diego realises, jarringly, that this is the first time they've interacted without the haze of heat and rut in the way in years. Since they all left the awful those they'd been pulled back to now.

"Hey gorgeous" Four replies, smile growing.

Klaus smells high, like he always did, and it sours his lovely scent but Diego can't find it in him to care because they're talking. They're really talking. They're not mindlessly leaping straight into fucking away biology until another six months pass, they're standing together and using their goddamn words.

"You didn't... You didn't leave a note" Diego croaks. "Last time. You always leave a note"

He'd gone to mop the floors despite being dead on his feet, expecting to find Klaus still sleeping through the mating exhaustion, only to find Klaus had snuck out the fire escape.

And no note.

Klaus looks like he's about to try and apologise, or conjure up an over the top and inappropriate Klausism, but bites his lip at the last moment.

"Buy some paper, man" He eventually goes with, surprisingly a short laugh from Diego. The sound of Diego's soft, wet, emotional laugh sparks a bubble of protective feelings in Klaus that shines through his eyes.

Only Klaus and Grace ever got to see this side of Diego, the side vulnerable and insecure. The part of Diego that didn't actually believe he'd live up to Luther or be worthy of being Klaus' mate. How many times had Diego wondered if the real reason Klaus ran away all the time was because he hated being bonded to Diego?

Their bond had been an accident after all.

Klaus reaches out, bracelets clinking, and steps into Diego's returning arms. The nuzzle where each others bites are on their necks, right below the right ear, and the only thing that would have made this better for Diego was if Klaus didn't reek of some drug he couldn't name.

When they lean back, forehead to forehead, Diego frets that he's about to ask Klaus questions that would definitely make the Omega flee when he's literally saved by the bell.

Luther's bell to be precise, being aggressively rung from downstairs.

"Family meeting I said!" He hollers, sounding beyond pissed off and Klaus snorts.

Diego raises his eyebrows at Klaus. He hasn't forgiven him for taking off without a note, but he wasn't nearly as angry as he'd convinced himself he was. Being angry at the others had been so much easier, since forever, than being angry at Klaus. Diego was terrible with feelings and seeing it from the other person's perspective, but even he could acknowledge that Klaus hadn't thought clearly and made a measured decision in over a decade.

Klaus reacts to something to their left and rolls his eyes. "You're right" He says, even though Diego didn't say anything and he smells like he's still a good hour or more away from coming down.

"Let's go see what the bitchiest beta we know wants" Klaus smirks, throwing an arm over Diego's shoulder.

Diego shakes his head, stifling a grin, and lets Klaus lead him away.


	2. Chapter 2

>   
>  _The first time Klaus was gone long enough for us to worry, it was Diego who summoned up the courage to ask dad about it: even though I could see Ben wanted to ask desperately too. We were eight years old and when Diego didn't let the subject drop like Reginald ordered him to, our father had Grace take away Diego's food and made him stand to watch us eat. I remember our siblings being so surprised by what came later, that is our brothers' mating bond, but when I look back this was the moment I had known to some level in my childish mind that there was something different between the two of them that the others did not share: long before Allison and Luther's crushes had even developed on one another._
> 
> _For someone so young Diego had looked so furious I thought he was going to explode, and even now I'm shocked to remember how he picked a book off the shelf and threw it at our father's head. Naturally it hit him, Diego never misses his mark._
> 
> _He had yelled at dad to bring Klaus back, he wanted him back, and then ran off before Reginald could even rise from his chair._
> 
> _Pogo and I found him hiding in a far wing of the house where we weren't suppose to go, crying and begging for Pogo to please bring Klaus back. That he was sorry._
> 
> _I never did ask him what he was sorry for, as I knew it wasn't because of the book. I regret that now._

* * *

 

Around the fireplace, they all sat. Luther alone on one double, Vanya to his left in a lone chair by the window with her eyes fixed downward, Allison mirroring her opposite, and finally Diego who plucks Klaus' cigarette right out of the Omega's hand when he drops down beside him, winking at Klaus' pout and quiet 'hey' when he puts it out carelessly into the wood of their father's priceless furniture.

Luther looks annoyed, but thankfully says nothing on it, and Vanya notices Allison smile to herself.

"I guess we should get this started" Luther says finally, standing up and breaking the awkward silence over them. "So I figured we could have some kind of memorial service, in the courtyard at sundown, say a few words. Just at dad's favourite spot"

Allison frowns. "Dad had a favourite spot?"

"Yeah you know under the oak tree" When he sees their blank looks, the Beta looks taken back. "We used to sit out there all the time, he never do that with you...?"

Klaus extends his legs in a languid stretch, interrupting Luther, and throws his bare feet onto Diego's lap. "Will there be any refreshments? Tea, scones? Cucumber sandwiches are always a win"

His Omega sister watches Diego's hand come to rest on Klaus' ankle like it belongs there, and her instincts ache deep below her medication longing for that kind of closeness. She wonders if it hurts Allison to see the pair; wonders if she's as curious as Vanya is over their familiarity. Of course they were mates, but Vanya's fairly sure neither of them have seen each other in years just like the rest of them, the estranged Academy heroes, but the way the tension in Diego's shoulders bleed away and his lip quirks into a smirk at Klaus' easy teasing tells otherwise.

A thought lights up in Vanya's mind then, when Allison asks bewildered if the skirt Klaus is wearing is her own and Klaus cheekily responds, that they might be spending Klaus' heats together. It was surprising, but made sense. Vanya handled her heats alone, as most Omegas in modern day did, and happily so, she had just assumed Klaus did the same- or maybe spent it with a different Alpha each time, as his shamelessly overshared promiscuous ways would lend to.

She swallows at the thought of them reading her book together. Reading that part together. God she regretted putting that in.

"Listen up" Luther snaps her out of her thoughts. "There's still some important things we need to discuss"

Diego looks up from where he was taking a sip of the drink Vanya wasn't convinced Klaus was willingly sharing with him, at least not a hundred percent. Without looking at each other the mated pair pass the glass between themselves. "Like what?"

"The way he died" One answers gravely.

"I don't understand, I thought they said it was a heart attack" Vanya asks, looking up at him. The look he gives her makes her feel small, like she's a fool for thinking it was that simple, and she instantly regrets speaking.

"All I'm saying is that at the very least something happened, the last time I talked to dad he sounded strange-" Klaus gargles something over the top of him, spluttering his and Diego's drink everywhere, and Allison watches with pain in her chest when Diego shakes his head fondly with a glance at Klaus like the Omega is his world. For an accidental bonding, Allison might have been impressed and said they were the ideal mates, except she knew better. Luther breezes on as though Klaus hadn't said a word. Or rather, gurgled a word. "He sounded on edge, told me I should be careful who to trust"

For a moment Diego looks as if he doesn't want to throw his shoe at his brother; almost sympathetic. Almost. "Luther, he was a paranoid, bitter old man who was starting to lose what was left of his marbles"

This time it's Luther who interrupts, which makes Diego bristle and Vanya wince. She knew from a lifetime of observations that Diego only ever tolerated Klaus interrupting him, which strangely enough the other rarely ever did, even long before their biting at sixteen. "No, he must have known something was going to happen. Look, I know you don't like to do it, but I need you to talk to dad"

Vanya closes her eyes at Luther's next mistake.

Klaus scowls over the sound of Diego's low rumbling growl. "Tsh, I can't just call dad in the afterlife and be like 'dad, could you stop playing tennis with Hitler for a minute and take a quick call?'"

"Since when, that's your thing"

"I'm not in the right frame of mind" Klaus objects, straightening out and instead leaning on his Alpha, who glared venomously at One.

Never liking Diego's attitude towards Luther, Allison's next words come out rougher than she intends. "He's high"

She knows he is, her Alpha nose could smell it on him the moment he pulled her in for a hug in their father's office. Luther and Allison exchange a furious look, while Vanya finds herself in the unusual situation of being the one Diego meets with a pained look; Vanya hasn't been close enough to Klaus to catch any hint of his scent, and Luther doesn't have the nose for pheromones being a Beta, so before Klaus loudly confirms that he is, Vanya already knows Allison is right. Diego seems to realise who he's beseeching and snaps his attention away quickly, lip curled at Luther when the Beta raises his voice for Klaus to sober up.

Vanya almost laughs. As if it's that easy?

"Don't talk to him like that"

She must have blinked because suddenly Diego is on his feet and squaring up to Luther, and in defence of him Allison slams her hand into Diego's chest to stop him dead in his tracks, which Vanya can see Klaus finds as hysterical as she does given that Luther's ability is super-strength. He was easily four times stronger than Diego, even given Diego's Alpha status.

As funny as seeing Allison and Diego's tiny selves next to Luther is, Klaus can't deny the rush of hot feeling Diego defending him brings to his cheeks. And between his legs.

Ben looks at him disturbed and resigned, like he knows what Klaus is thinking, and the Omega offers him a wink while their siblings bicker over the significance of the monocle.

The tail end of Luther's tirade catches their attention, and the pair look back at him in confusion. Klaus asks. "Where are you going with this?"

"Well isn't it obvious, Klaus?" Diego slinks around, pacing restlessly. "He thinks one of us killed dad"

Even Allison groans, voicing her disgust, when Luther doesn't deny it and his silence confirms that yes, he did think one of them did it. Diego sneers up at him, commending One's leadership skills and storms out with Vanya following quickly behind, for a moment it seems like Luther is going to grab the two Omegas following Diego out and Klaus shoots him a glare usually unlike him.

"You're crazy" Klaus tells him. "You know, I'm just gonna go murder mom I'll be right back"

He doesn't stay to listen to Luther's calls, after him, after Vanya and even Allison whom Klaus wasn't aware could lose her patience with their fearless leader, and instead pads down the hall to follow Diego out into the courtyard.

Vanya watches the pair disappear out the doors and checks her watch. Still two more hours until her next dose.

* * *

 

"You should put some shoes on" Diego snaps, bursting through the doors and circling the courtyard restlessly.

Klaus wafts his hand dismissively. He and Ben watch Diego pace around a few more times before a pointed look from the latter has Klaus rolling his eyes and stepping into Diego's path, hand coming to a stop over Diego's heart. It's softer, far less aggressive than when Allison had done it, but Diego looks just as agitated to both Klaus and Ben's shock.

"Should have left him a note" Ben unhelpfully supplies, drifting over to inspect his statue again in distaste.

Four wrinkles his nose, ignoring Ben. "Hey, hey, you're not gonna let Luther get to you are you? Luther? As if he's worth it"

Ben spins on his heels to give Klaus an incredulous look, that he fights not to return. Sure he knows nothing pisses his Alpha off more than their dumbass brother, Luther breathed wrong in Diego's opinion, but as high as he is Klaus is leagues away from being able to work out anything better to say and he has no way to ask Ben to feed him lines without tipping Diego off and making things worse.

"He thinks we'd kill pack" Diego seethes. "Dad was an asshole, a grade A asshole, but that doesn't mean he wasn't pack. One of us killing our own? Who the hell does he think he is, huh? Why does he always have to think so little of us?"

"Okay, okay" Klaus holds up his hands to placate Diego when he moves to prowl again. "Not to be sexist but he is a Beta"

Ben is suddenly very close behind Diego, looking at Klaus with eyebrows raised and his tongue firmly in his cheek. If he could, Klaus knows Ben would poke him in the eye.

"So was dad. Betas are notorious for thinking us secondaries are wild animals given by raw angry, evil instinct and uh, I don't know, magical fucking fairy dust" Klaus finishes, clawing his fingers and giving a silly roar sound effect. "We all know Luther's like dad in a lot of ways, he probably thinks the same about us too"

Diego looks down to the side as if to consider this, and Klaus finds it ironic given what he just said that he wants to growl seeing the scar their father put on the side of Diego's head. Not driven by raw instinct, sure, but Klaus dared anyone not to get angry at the memory of how Diego got it.

"Ben never did" Two murmurs, the fight gone from him. Klaus meets Ben's gaze over Diego's shoulder and swallows thickly.

If he thought for a second Diego would believe him, he'd tell his Alpha that their favourite brother was right behind him that very moment looking at him like he was desperate to give him a hug. Klaus wraps his arms around Diego for Ben, smiling both at how Diego's hands slide around his waist, and the watery, grateful look Ben nods at him.

"Yeah, I know he didn't" Klaus whispers, maintaining eye contact with his ghostly brother. "He was good like that, perfect even"

Ben purses his lips, head ducking, and then he's gone. Klaus doesn't summon him back, he knows when Ben wants to be alone in wherever it is spirits disappear off to when they're not following him around.

Klaus kisses Diego's scar and then the bite mark. "Come on, let's go see if I can summon Satan and ask him who took his fucking monocle"

Diego huffs, pleasingly close to a laugh, and falls into step easily with Klaus as they move back over to the doors. To his relief Luther was nowhere to be seen, and neither were anyone else, and his breath caught at the thought of being alone again with Klaus. Their earlier interruption had saved them both from awkward conversations, yet even so there was always a part of both of them that craved the other's private company without anyone else to butt in or disturb their scent.   
Giving into temptation, Diego combs his fingers through the back of Klaus' hair.

"Your curls?"

Klaus hums, and then touches his hair. "Oh, yeah. I've been in rehab and don't tell Allison, she'd kill me, but I've been using my bunk buddy's hair brush"

Diego thinks that's gross and his face shows it, to Klaus' delight. He remembers something about Allison flipping out at Klaus when they were young teenagers telling him to never put a brush through his beautiful curls again: stating something about three something and a letter, Diego couldn't remember. Apparently curls shouldn't be brushed and Allison would have thought someone as stylish as Klaus would be more concerned with his hair looking good, especially when leaving his curls alone would be a suitable rebellion against Reginald, who'd always made Klaus brush them out and gel them down so they could barely be seen.

They turn the corner into the living room again, and both pause to appraise the urn.

"You think you can summon him?" Diego asks, fighting the urge to put Reginald's portrait face down. It was bad enough there was a massive painting looking over them from above.

The Seance shrugs. "Weirder things have happened. Just gotta sober up"

He slaps his face a few times, winking when Diego shakes his head, and makes a pirouette to spin from watching Diego take a seat to facing the urn with determination.

"Okay, daddy-o" He can't see Diego's wince, but feels it, in his soul. "Time to show up"

And thus it begins. Diego is entertained for a good hour watching his mate try to summon up the ghost of their father, swinging from encouraging to mocking and back again, eyes never leaving the sway of Klaus' movements and how lovely the skirt drifted around his legs. Diego, distracted as he is, sinks into thinking about how he's always been a leg man, which made sense given Klaus' lack of cleavage, and it's maddeningly nice to see Klaus' on display like this. Four had the kind of legs skirts were made for.

He thinks about how they left around his hips, ankles behind him to hook him in closer. Or when they would squeeze tight as Klaus would start to thrash, begging Diego to go faster and harder, nearly in tears from the waves of his heat over him coupled with his approaching orgasm. Those legs were so strong and swift too, coltish whenever Klaus skipped away or danced around the room: sometimes it amazed Diego that Klaus wasn't truly floating with how easily he moved...

"- always such a selfish asshole!" Klaus snarls at the urn, shocking Diego out of his daydream. The distress in his voice kills the boner tightening in Diego's pants, and Two is up in seconds to hug Klaus from behind: driven by instinct to comfort Klaus. It's oddly more intense than it's ever been before, usually Diego could resist, but he puts it down to the stress of everything going on around them.

"Think it's time we stopped, you've been calling for dad for an hour now" Diego murmurs into the back of Klaus' neck, eyes drifting closed when he hears the famous purr content Omegas gave off.

~~_He left you without saying a word. Without leaving a note._ ~~

Klaus pats his hands that are clasped at his belly button and cranes his head around so the side of his face meets the soft touch of Diego's lips. This level of affection between them had been unheard of since the night time when they were younger, stolen away while Reginald was sleeping, to curl up in bed together and whisper about running away: somewhere they were allowed to touch whenever they wanted, and spend as much or as little time in company as they wished.

"You're right. I don't know about you, but I could use a drink" Klaus sighs, reaching across the bar. His fingers catch the edge of the urn and before either can scramble to catch it, the ashes go spraying across the bar.

Klaus covers his mouth and looks at Diego, who stares at the ashes in shock.

For a heartbeat neither says a thing. Then Diego's dark eyes flick up to meet Klaus' green, and in synchronisation the pair snort ugly and loud. Something happened then that Diego hadn't experienced in years: he laughed, guffawing and bending, his hand gripping Klaus' shoulder for balance. Klaus' tittering laugh was drowned out by the sound Diego couldn't recall having made since his days at police academy, back when he first met Eudora and learned about her obsession with hockey: her passion for it brutish and so unexpected he hadn't been able to hold back when she shrieked at the television with all number of insults.

It takes him embarrassingly long to compose himself, eventually mellowing down when he notices the fond look Klaus is giving him. Like Diego is something special.

"Dare you to hide one of the taxidermy voles in there" Four says at last, voice soft.

And then Diego is gone again, slapping his hand on the bar and accidentally bellowing up a plume of their father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> posting this early because I'll have NO time over the weekend, but I'd love to hear what everyone thinks!!! 
> 
> Also: we're going with Vanya and Helen, which I was thinking too but wasn't 100% sure people would want to see, so I'm super happy with that :D


	3. Chapter 3

> _The only type of training with the others I was put through was against Klaus. We both presented as Omegas on the same day, just like Allison and Diego had as Alphas, and our father took a strong interest in seeing how their secondary sex affected their abilities. He seemed convinced there would be an impact, and for Klaus I must have been the control factor._
> 
> _He had us race mostly. Being known for speed we two Omegas ran laps after laps as fast as we could under our father’s watchful eye, and in those moments I started to understand my siblings better. Klaus wasn’t phased by the fact he made us run until we collapsed, like this was normal for him, but I was screaming in my mind. What my siblings considered routine was brutal on my untrained body and I wanted to tell dad that Klaus was a trained warrior from birth, he was the one who went through training regimes harsh enough to make SEALs burn out, there was no point in comparing how fast a male Omega was in comparison to a female Omega when the former had that upbringing. I was normal, nothing special even in this, of course Klaus won all our races._
> 
> _I never did though, my days of questioning our father had died years before, so I just watched him take notes and continually check his monocle: silent and out of breath, ready to drop, while my brother beside me stared at something else only he could see with barely a sweat broken. Once Reginald was done writing his readings he would order us to race again._
> 
> _Klaus won every single time and Diego’s grin when our brother eagerly boasted about it later was vicious and proud, and so smug when he glared my way. Ben was the only one to lend me a smile despite the fact I was a failure at even being an Omega._

* * *

 

Klaus flinches when the baggy in his hand is slapped out and sent flying.

“Ow, hey, what the fuck Di!?”

Two gave him a sharp look that nearly quelled the bratty glare Klaus was fixing him with. Nearly. For a short while the pair stood in the kitchen with narrow eyes, daring the other silently, like they were kids once more fighting over the last of their mother’s cupcakes.

“Sobering up doesn’t mean taking more of that shit” Diego spits finally, folding his arms. All his earlier mirth gone in the face of his mate’s drug addiction. “Look came down here for food not that”

“Why do you care? Let dad stay banished into Hell. Come on Diego, I like being high. High is so good” Klaus pats Diego’s chest, and moves to dart around him. But even with the swiftness mother nature gifted him as an Omega, Diego cut an advantage from not being clouded with drugs and lightly shoves Klaus away from the discarded bag. “Ow”

“That didn’t hurt” The Alpha states blankly.

Klaus juts out his chin, hands clasped over his heart dramatically. “It hurt my delicate soul”

Before Klaus can whip around him Diego spins and stomps his boot down on the bag, crushing the contents and ignoring the shriek Klaus gives. He’s not remotely surprised when Klaus lashes out with hits he can feel the Omega holding back on, either that or Klaus is significantly weaker these days than the last time they sparred as teenagers.

“Fuck you” Klaus hisses, thumping Diego in the chest. It almost winds him.

Diego tries to grab Klaus’ swatting hands beating at his chest and arms, stopping and starting words trying to reason with the addict, but eventually settled for grabbing Klaus’ face. Green eyes are fixed on the bag at their feet filled with destroyed pills, and Diego bites back the urge to bark at Klaus harshly. Instead, with his middle finger he presses on Klaus’ bonding scar.

The effect is immediate.

“No fair” Klaus hums, eyes closed as a floating feeling washes over him. His smacks droop into limp arms that feebly hold onto Diego’s elbows and his voice, although carrying a note of bitterness, is quiet and serene.

Diego takes a breath, trying to relax himself too, and gives his babe a teasing smile. “Yeah well consider it pay back”

Pay back for when Diego came back to find Klaus in his apartment with an oncoming heat, but too angry and riled to think clearly. He’d just been kicked out of the police academy and humiliated in the process. Diego had wanted to hit something, so he did, throwing punches at the walls until his knuckles split: only to suddenly fall limp and soft, like a blanket, into Klaus’ arms with two fingers pressing against the bite mark at his ear.

Klaus had helped him clean up his knuckles in silence, then they fucked until Klaus’ heat passed. Klaus left with his usual note on the counter, this one telling Diego the police were pigs and he was better off not joining the corrupt system. Signed off with ‘fuck the police’ and one of his amusing illustrations.

Diego still had it in a shoe box back at his place, on top of the cupboards, along with all Klaus’ other post-heat messages.

He release the pressure on Klaus’ mating point and watches him carefully, fully prepared for Klaus to fight him again or try to salvage his stash.

In perfect synchronisation, their heads pricked up, turning their ears and eyes to the ceiling. It was faint but there was distinctively a beat thrumming through the house.

Children behave. That’s what they say when we’re together.

Klaus meets Diego’s eyes and the tiniest quirk of their lips release the last of the tension.

“Oh Luther” Klaus says on an out breath. This was, they all knew, One’s emotionally stunted way of telling them all he was sorry.

The last time either of them heard Luther play an apology song through the house had been nine years ago: silently begging in his own way for them not to leave him.

With Diego’s eyes on him, Klaus whispers out the lyrics and begins to sway.

He watches breath taken, as Klaus swings around the room, skirt flowing, looking as weightless as ever. They’d never danced with one another before, Luther’s songs were always danced to when each sibling was alone, even through everyone knew the others were dancing too. It was… Weird to have another there, even if it was Klaus, and Diego finds he can’t quite summon up the courage just yet.

That is until Klaus appears back over to him, arms across Diego’s shoulders, and meets his gaze with delight in green eyes.

“I think we’re alone now” Klaus mouths to the music, making Diego’s heart skip. “Doesn’t seem to be anyone around”

Diego smirks and in a quick move that has Klaus whooping, lifts Four up with arms wrapped around his waist and twirls them both around.

“Cheesy” Klaus observes, aware Diego’s move came when Tiffany sings about her partner’s arms around her. He freaking loves it.

All he gets is a shrug and then he’s back on the ground, holding Diego by the wrists as they wildly spin around the table in a horrible attempt at dancing. To Klaus’ delight and surprise Diego moves as naturally as he does, flowing with the song just the same and busting out moves Klaus would have never pegged Diego for. The feeling of being close again is addictive, he feels a different kind of high as he and Diego weave together. If he could, Klaus decides he’d dance with Diego all the time: he won’t get his hopes up though, never get his hopes up, not when Diego deserved someone better than a pathetic, weak junkie like him.

He effortlessly joins Klaus when the Omega mounts the table, heated and wanting as Klaus lies down so Diego can crawl up him slowly: leaning in once to kiss at the dip of Klaus’ collar bone.

Klaus inhales sharply. Legs part to accommodate Diego between them, knees bowed, and Allison’s skirt slides down his thighs to pool at his hips. All thoughts of his ruined, and expensive, stash gone at the feel of Diego’s hot breath over his lips.

“Running just as fast as we can” Diego half whispers, half sings quietly, nose to nose with Klaus. His hands move up Klaus’ arms, which had settled up by Four’s head, and interlinks their fingers. “Holding onto one another’s hands”

Klaus knows this is a terrible idea, Diego does too, but neither of them admit it or move away. Not when Klaus’ lips are flushed so pink and Diego’s cheeks are beautifully dusted with a blush.

“Trying to get away, into the night…” Klaus returns, lips tickling Diego’s as the words leave them.

Thunder suddenly rolls through the house, scratching the music to a stop, and it seems to shake the foundations of the building. Diego leaps off the table, pulling out a knife on instinct and earning himself a quirked brow from Klaus as if to say 'oh you’re gonna stab an earthquake huh?’.

He puts it away with a scowl, jogging up the stairs after Klaus, who was always so frustratingly fast.

“Maybe it’s old daddy-kins” Klaus calls over his shoulder, shouting over the violent rumbles shaking their old home. “Trust him to be a dramatic bitch”

On the way past Klaus grabs a fire extinguisher, although Diego has no idea the fuck why, and they run into Allison and Luther on the way to the courtyard.

It’s a blistering nightmare outside, a bizarre vortex swirling in the sky, and Luther pulls Vanya behind him from where she was dumbstruck staring up at it. He reels off everything it might be, scrambling his brain for solutions to either one.

To the bemusement of all of them, Klaus pushes through and fires the extinguisher at the blue phenomenon, then settles for throwing it through when that does nothing. They see it land somewhere through the rippling film, and unless their eyes are deciding them, there was a man staring back at them.

“Get behind me” Luther commands, making sure Allison and Vanya are doing just that, while Diego manhandles Klaus to the back feeling an flare of protectiveness so intense he worries he might drift into the Haze.

Klaus’ fingertips at his waist, gripping his sweater, pulls him from that pit of mindless instinct.

The academy watch in confusion and horror as a man squeezes himself through the vortex from his side, looking pained and straining, and with sparks and flashes begins to morph into someone younger. Familiar.

Eventually the figure drops to the ground before them, gasping for breath, and the crackling blue white vortex implodes on itself to disappear. The leaves settle and the sky seems to clear.

“Am I dreaming or is that little Number Five I see before me?” Klaus questions as they all shuffle forward as a collective, like penguins.

Five looks up at them all, then down at himself, and finally back up at five confounded faces.

“Shit” He exclaims.

Vanya blinks in shock. _Okay_.

* * *

 

Five tells them all to meet him in the kitchen and blinks away, leaving the group with no option but to give each other varying looks of bemusement and annoyance: and do as they were told.

  
"What's the date? The exact date" Five snaps as soon as Luther steps through the threshold, quickly followed by Allison. Vanya notes as she shuffles in behind Diego and Klaus, that Five is still going for the same old food he used to eat. The peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches she intimately knew how to prepare just how he liked them.

"The 24th" Vanya tells him instantly. She splits her attention, as she always had, between all her siblings in turn. She watches Klaus predictably hoist up on the table cross legged, and tilts her head when Diego sits beside him close enough that they touch, and as if hearing her longing thoughts for some kind of attentive Alpha Allison pulls out a chair for Vanya with a smile and a nod.

Blushing, Vanya took it gratefully. Luther looks over with a frown that Vanya imagines Allison is returning with a look of 'really?'. As she used to when they were teenagers and she did nice things for her Omega sister, the Beta seemingly forever fuelled by jealousy.

Five pauses, reaching for the peanut butter. "Of what?"

"March" Vanya clears her throat and ignores the look Klaus peeks her way, in his silently knowing way he would. Her cheeks burn.

They all jump when he slams the jar on the table, contradicting the small 'good' he mouths to himself, looking beyond frustrated.

Luther recovers first, putting on his 'I'm in charge' tone and rolling back his shoulders. "So, are we gonna talk about what just happened? It's been 17 years"

Five quirks a brow at him, scoffing. "It's been a lot longer than that." Then he blinks past Luther.

"I haven't missed that" One mutters under his breath when Five appears by the drawers to retrieve himself a knife, and then blinks back to the table to slice his sandwich viciously in half.

"Where'd you go?" Diego speaks then. Vanya knows him well enough, despite what he might have argued, to know that he was hurt and trying to mask it. They all were really. Five's disappearance shook all of them up and even though he tried constantly to act like it wasn't the case, Diego was among the most emotional of the Academy. Vanya knew he'd cried for his missing brother, she'd heard him whisper begging for Five to come home as many nights as she had left sandwiches and the light on, and had spent every night curled up with Klaus in either of their beds for at least a month afterwards as if fearing Klaus would disappear one day too. Given how messed up Diego had gotten over losing a brother he had clashed with, the pair never liking the other's attitude, it didn't surprise Vanya that Diego had took off the second Ben and Klaus were gone.

The back of Klaus' finger strokes over Diego's knee, quick enough to seem like he's playing with the tassels of the skirt.

"The future" Five responds, like that's no big deal of a revelation. "And it's shit, by the way"

Klaus chirps. "Called it" But the only ones who pay him any attention are Vanya and Diego, who's lips twitch in spite of his foul mood.

"-I should've listened to the old man. Jumping through space is one thing, jumping through time is a toss of the dice" He then looks at Klaus, speculatively, as if noticing his Ouija brother for the first time. The only warning he gives before blinking up behind Klaus is a quick: "Nice dress"

Four's 'danke' is reduced to an indignant yelp when Five grabs a fist full of his hair and forces his head forward, leaning around to inspect his neck and blinking away just as Diego snarls, fierce enough to have Vanya jump in her seat. Five appears on Diego's other side and looks at his neck to, stepping back to let Luther block Diego's attempt to jump him.

“I presume those bites are from each other? Fascinating” Five says it like it's anything but, his gaze critical as he blinks back to his sandwich.

One looks positively nauseous that Five mentioned their brothers’ bond aloud, so overtly after over a decade of their father forbidding mentions of it, which prompts Five to cock a brow at his hypocrisy.

“Yeah” Diego replies, defensive. He waits, they all do, for Five to comment further. Maybe make a remark about their lack of control during sparring or voice his disgust at their sibling status, or maybe some other observation that hopefully made more sense than his time travel tirade. He doesn't. He just takes a bite of his sandwich.

Luther clears his throat. "How'd you know about that anyway?"

The man had a point. Diego and Klaus had bonded two years and eleven months after his disappearance after all.

Five notices the newspaper near by, and picks it up with feigned interest. "What part of the future didn't you get? Hm, guess I missed the funeral. I read it in your book, Vanya. Interesting read all things considered. Ballsy move, giving up the family secrets... I'm sure it went over well"

Allison puts up a hand, cutting off any arguments possibly brought on by Five's light comment. "Wait, back up a minute. How did you get back?"

Their youngest appearing sibling seems to appreciate the question. "In the end, I had to project my consciousness forward into a suspended quantum state version of myself that exists across every possible instance of time"

"That makes no sense" Diego says, more to himself than Five.

"Well, it would if you were smarter" Predictably, Luther has to intercept Diego again before he can fight a thirteen year old.

Luther squints at Five. "How long were you there?"

"Forty-five years. Give or take" Five smashes the last of his sandwich in his mouth then, ever one for the dramatic. Klaus isn't stupid, not like the others think he is, he sees the glint in Five's eye and knows just what the little shit is doing.

He laughs to himself at how smug Five looks when, all at once, the others burst into questions.

* * *

 

Klaus finds Diego sitting with their mother, looking at the paintings and leans on the banister to admire them both from afar. Even from the distance he stands he can see Diego's hair is still damp from the outside rain, but he's thankfully changed his clothes. Klaus had offered to share his umbrella with Diego, but Five wasn't the only dramatic bitch in the family, and to Four's amusement Diego had settled for getting soaked so long as he looked good.

Diego, in Klaus' opinion, always looked good. The only time he hadn't was when he messed up his face being thrown through a window during a mission when they were fifteen. He'd looked terrible for weeks but healed remarkably well, with the only sign of his ordeal left over a scar over his brow where a particularly large shard had deeply embedded itself. It was the first time one of them got seriously hurt during a mission and it shook everyone up, almost as much as Five disappearing, and Klaus had gotten himself locked in the mausoleum all day and night for screaming that Diego wasn't well enough to go on another mission just yet.

Reginald hadn't cared. Hadn't cared one bit. He had only cared for Klaus' insolence and Diego's temporarily impacted aim.

_He was a monster._

Oh, now wasn't that just the truth?

"Stop creeping" Ben tells him, grinning when Klaus jumps. "Fine line between lovesick and weird, brother"

Four pulls a face. "Fuck off"

His voice carries, alerting Diego and Grace to his presence. They turn to look over at him, both pleasantly surprised to see him standing on the bridge partition arching across the foyer, and suddenly Klaus can't handle mom's wide smile nor Diego's expectant look. Klaus flaps a hand, waving them off, and nearly trips backwards in his haste to scuffle away.

"Where are you going?" Ben asks slowly, holding a hand out to point at Grace and Diego. He winces when Diego's expression closes off in disappointment. "Go talk to them!"

Klaus makes a 'nuh-uh' sound, taking the steps two at a time and skipping past Vanya and Pogo, and skidding down the next set of stairs to lead into the kitchen: ignoring the whole way Ben's stern calls of his name, growing in their urgency as he ghosts at intervals along Klaus' route. Four is fairly sure his bag of crushed drugs would still be on the floor, he hadn't had the chance to find them again while Five explained everything, but that hopefully meant Diego also hadn't had the chance to clean it up.

He needed to get high. Needed to.

Ben appears at the bottom of the stairs, trying to look determined, but Klaus breezes right through him to Six's chagrin. His annoyance is quickly fizzled into smug pleasure when Klaus runs straight into Allison.

The look she pins him with feels like she knew exactly what he was in a rush to get, but it could be his come-down paranoia talking. Regardless of which it was, Klaus clicks his fingers and points to his old guitar still mounted on the wall beside Diego's bass and Luther's sticks, transitioning from looking harried to looking calm and pretending like it was what he was there for.

"Ah, my old strings. You know maybe I'll sell this, it is mine now after all" Klaus bypasses Five when the old man blinks into his way, but Five pays him no attention. Instead he rifles through the cupboards searching for something.

"Where's Vanya?" Five asks, slamming one cupboard to then swing open the next. Klaus slides into a chair, half pretending to lightly strum at the strings, half angling down so he can examine under the table for where his drugs might have ended up.

Allison clears her throat, shaking her head with an expression of pure motherly judgement when Klaus looks at her, and then he suddenly understands. She had known what he was there for. The back stabbing little bit-

"Gone" Allison sighs, sad. She does a fantastic job of ignoring Klaus' intense glare and unhappy pheromones. Ben stands by her side with a smile so wide his teeth show and dimples form on his cheeks.

"That's unfortunate" Five flicks the last cupboard closed. "An entire square block. Forty-two bedrooms, 19 bathrooms, but no, not a single drop of coffee"

The Alpha scowls. "Dad hated caffeine"

"Well he hated children too but he had plenty of us" Klaus snorts at first, amused. Then something seems to take over him, his expression turning lost as he stares at nothing. "Though he did draw the line at seven"

A heart breaking silence follows his words. It's the first time since arriving back that Five has no witty comment to make. Instead he finds himself wondering what he would have done had he been there when it happened: if he'd landed back then instead of now, with all his 'skills' and experience, he's quietly certain Reginald would be a dead man long ago.

They're spared the agonising task of forming a reply to that when they hear light steps jogging down the stairs, but Klaus doesn't seem to notice. His Alpha sister thinks back to what she said to Diego, who heads straight to the sink to fill himself up a glass of water, and shame burns in her gut. She can tell the exact moment Diego notices Klaus' melancholy because he puts his drink down slowly and turns a murderous glare on the pair in the room he can see, a glare Ben is quietly glad it's impossible for Diego to shoot him with, and seems to come to a decision on who's fault it is Klaus has drifted off.

He decides it's Allison's.

"What did you do?" Diego seethes. "I warned you if you said anything-"

Allison, to her credit, keeps her head. "Nothing! I didn't say anything. We were just talking about coffee"

Diego looks like he doesn't believe her at all so Five rescues her.

"It's true. Can't find a damn bean anywhere" He salutes Diego with a mug, doubling up to show him how awfully empty of coffee it is. The smaller wonders if Allison is offended how easily Diego believes Five over her, but given their historic tension Five himself isn't all that surprised. On the scale of how much Diego liked his siblings, Five was third to Allison's fourth, a status nowhere near as remarkable as it sounded given how steep the slope from Ben to himself was.

The Kraken exhales and his attention leaves the pair, finding Klaus instead. He finds his earlier frustration at Klaus practically running from him dissolving, in it's place an ache that ran unbearably deep. Diego had seen Klaus like this countless times before, prior to the Academy splitting and after. He remembered how much it annoyed Reginald that Klaus developed the habit of staring off into the distance, lost and harrowingly distraught but too exhausted to scream out any of his feelings. Their father had ordered Klaus to snap out of his melancholy many times but never succeeded: he blamed Diego for them, blamed Klaus for them, blamed everyone except himself because even though he forbade them from mentioning what he had done to Klaus Reginald constantly assumed one of the teenagers had broken their promise and purposely tipped their brother into an almost catatonic state.

It was only ever Reginald's fault. All his fault.

All intentions of leaving Klaus behind, like Klaus had done him over a decade before, were dust as he slowly crouched in front of his mate and placed a gentle hand on the Omega's ankle.

"Hey beautiful" Diego whispers, rubbing his thumb in circles on Klaus' skin. Coaxing some reaction from the other.

Five watches Diego with curiosity burning in his eyes. Growing up a part from the others left him with a feeling of otherness, of separation he refuses to comment on, and he finds himself fascinated by one particular feature of Vanya’s book now that it played out before his eyes. Vanya seemed to think that Diego and Klaus were unsurprising, which Five had begged to differ when he read it, but now seeing with his own eyes how much the pair gravitated into each others orbit: he wonders how he missed it as a child. All his memories of them were more often than not paired. Even as children they were a unit with only Ben coming close to being let in, and perhaps only by virtue of being another even number for their silly club and spending most of his time reading silently while the pair sought out chaos together as far as they could stretch their father’s patience. Their relationship had been so constant since toddler years that, Five realises, there was no change to note like Luther and Allison: Diego and Klaus always were, while the other two made a notable shift from just another set of kids in the house to sneaking around and smiling shy over the dinner table.

Five for the first time since reading about it, finds he is not the least bit surprised.

He makes a small note in his mind to study the pair more. He’s never spent so much time around a bonded pair, the Commission discouraged bonds between their workers and before that he had only Dolores for company. Hardly suitable situations for learning about just how Alpha and Omegas worked: as a Beta growing up in Reginald’s stoic household that was one area Five fell short on, despite what readings he could find out of the rubble of the lost world.

The Boy notices Allison's eyes are shiny with tears and remembers she has a child of her own. A child, Five thinks with a lance through his heart, that won't live to grow up either if he fails in his mission.

Unbeknown to Five, and Ben who drifts around Diego and Klaus anxiously, Allison is thinking about what she said to Diego that morning. How yet again she had said something she couldn't take back. Impulsive words. One of her many vices.

"Come back, beautiful" Two repeats the like over and over, trying different combinations to rouse Klaus. Aware of most of those watching, Diego swallows his pride and leans forward to kiss Klaus' knee with his large doe eyes looking up at his mate's face. At the touch of soft lips on his skin, Klaus blinks back to life slowly, and gazes down at Diego dreamily.

Klaus, gone on everything around them, completely forgets he was trying to avoid the very man before him and had been on the hunt for drugs, drops his guitar with a painfully loud clatter and leans forward to bury his nose in Diego's short cropped hair.

Diego's fingers interlink with Klaus' and with the same gentleness he used with Grace, helps Klaus up out of his chair. Pliant and soft in his state Klaus stares at Diego as he does this with bright eyes and lips parted.

"Let's go yeah? I'll take you for dinner" Diego tells him, nodding. It encourages a semi-vacant nod from Klaus in return.

"Oh yeah. Fabulous" Klaus looks off to the side at something. "Eggs? No. No it's too late for eggs... Waffles? Yeah, can we have waffles?" He looks back at Diego then.

Two kisses Four's forehead. "Whatever you want, baby"

Allison looks stricken when Diego turns to the others in the room and he absolutely hates her for it. He nor Klaus needed her pity or grief. Diego had never been good with emotions, his own or anyone else's, with the only exception being the Omega he holds and only from years of cultivated practice through trial and error.

"Good luck on your new movie, sis. Hope it works out better than your bond and marriage" Diego spits, just to see her look at him with anything but sorrow. He can't think of anything to say to Five so he just flips him off. One is more successful than the other.

He leads Klaus away then, away from Allison and her bullshit excuses, and Five and his calculating stare like they were an interesting phenomenon and not his family.

Diego's pleased to see Klaus blinking back to life by the time they get outside. "I got a quick errand first, but then we'll get waffles. Promise"

Klaus pats his cheek and Diego knows its just to ground himself on the sensation of his Alpha's stubble across his sensitive finger tips. Seance always needed some form of rougher texture after a bout of dissociation, just to remind himself what was real and what was the two kinds of ghosts haunting him.

Just when Diego wonders if they're about to have a 'moment' as Klaus would call them, his mate gets a thoughtful look. "You know, every time I close my eyes I see a diarrhetic hippo about to shit on my face. It's terrifying!"

Between Grace's confusion and Klaus', it takes all of Diego's control not to sob. Instead, he rolls his eyes and opens the car door for Klaus.

"Terrific" He intones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Five knows how to cockblock in style. You can guarantee Diego and Klaus would have fucked on the family breakfast table to 80s romance music had he not chosen then to show up.
> 
> Vanyas entire mood this chapter is “well this might as well happen"


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A timeline that makes sense? I don't know her.
> 
> The show is for the sake of perspectives, my patience, and your own boredom, going to be massively condensed. From this chapter on things are going to get VERY canon divergent.

> _Among the most vivid of my memories of my brother Diego was the night he left. The night before Klaus had taken off and just days before our beloved Ben was taken from us on a mission we all knew should have been an easy in and out. While Klaus had stowed away without anyone’s notice, Diego made a show of it, packing his bags in front of our father and arguing that he was going out to find Klaus, and when he did Reginald would never see either of them ever again._
> 
> _The last thing he called Reginald was a monster and the last thing he said to Dr. Pogo was that he was just as bad as our father. It wasn’t a sentiment I could get behind, I’ve always liked Pogo, but all the stuff he shouted at dad was as if he pulled it out of my own mind._
> 
> _I like to think Diego found Klaus. That wherever they are now they’re happy together, in whatever set up they all perfection, and Reginald never does set eyes on them again. After all he did to those two in particular they deserve a thousand lifetimes together away from him._
> 
> _I also like to hope they won’t be too mad at me when they read this book. I did it for us all._

* * *

 

“So this errand, is it gonna take long because I’m starving here” Klaus opens with, slapping his belly.

Sobriety, he’s learning, comes with the frustrating awareness of his body’s needs. Gone were the days he barely noticed that a few chips or a hot dog were far from enough to fill him up. Hungry, thirsty, tired. Three things Klaus really had not missed.

Diego looks at Klaus’ thin body with a frown. He’s pleased Klaus has come out of his melancholy, it bothers him how skinny the Omega is. Klaus had always been slim but it had always been the type of slender a long distance runner would be, or a lithe ballet dancer, which incidentally Klaus was. There’s only the barest definition now, mostly bone, with all his taut muscle faded to drugs.

“Eyes on the road” Ben says urgently, even though Diego can’t hear him.

Klaus chuckles and reaches over to push Diego’s face away so he’s paying attention to driving again. “As flattering as it is to have your gorgeous brown eyes on me, Di, this is a nice car. Let’s not break her”

Ben exhales and glares at Klaus’ answering giggle. For a dead guy, Klaus thinks, he’s awfully concerned with safety.

“It won’t take long” Diego says by way of an answer, and Klaus pouts.

“Playing the brooding mysterious card, eh?” Four falls silent, sliding down low in the passenger seat and nibbling his thumb nail. Now he’s not drifting he’s itching for a fix. Or food. Or both. Yeah, both.

Diego wants to ask if he’s feeling better, but that ran the risk of reminding Klaus of what put him in that state in the first place. He opts instead to split his attention between the road and Klaus in his peripherals, wondering what it was Klaus was looking at in the back seat. He wonders how long it takes after a high for Klaus to see spirits again.

Ben and Klaus exchange looks when Diego pulls up at the docks. It feels like the beginning of a horror movie and Klaus is about to say so when Diego shuts off the engine.

“Give me a minute and then we’ll go get waffles, got it?” Diego tells him, tone less soft and cautious now Klaus is more himself again.

By way of an answer Klaus puts his feet up on the dash one leg at a time, maintaining eye contact as he does so with a petulant pout to his lips. He’d honestly forgotten he still had on Allison’s skirt, only remembering when the fabric slides down his thigh and Ben makes a hideous, nasal sound of laughter when Diego’s eyes follow the hem line’s descent.

“He has it so goddamn bad for you” Ben hoots, unheard by Diego as Two snaps away and gets out. Klaus’ lips quirk into a pleased smirk. “Soft little knife boy”

Four cracks a grin, angling to meet Ben’s beaming smile. “Not always that soft”

“How did I know you were going to- What is he doing?” The spirit interrupts himself, eyes moving past Klaus to stare incredulous at Diego. Who’s just… Standing by the edge.

Klaus’ favourite thing about Ben? Among other things, his hunger for the gossip. Their siblings would likely never know it but Ben knew everything that ever went on in their lives. Six was quiet and unassuming, but also an ear for all their voices if they needed to talk: much to the Horror’s glee. Ben loved to know stuff, specifically drama of which he was blissfully removed from. The Omega’s eyebrows raise when Ben derails his own sentence in favour of snooping on Diego.

“He’s not going to jump in is he? Kinda looks like Batman right now” Ben muses, squinting at the silhouette. Klaus leans on his palm, entertained watching Ben study Diego like one of Allison’s colourful magazines. “Oh he has something in his hand”

Four snorts, bowing his head and gesturing his hand when his brother blinks out of the car and appears right beside Diego. “There we go”

He stares at the roof of the car, grinning to himself, waiting for Ben to finish spying and return. When he does Ben looks puzzled.

“So?” Klaus wonders.

“He Titanic’d dad’s monocle” Ben’s nose wrinkles adorably and Klaus wants to tap it. He mimes letting something go and even makes a ‘plop’ sound with his mouth.

Diego turns to the car then, unaware of everything that transpired, and Klaus admires the move of the light over his neck and shoulders.

“He’s hotter than that old lady though” Four states. “Way… Way… Hotter. Hey boo, we done now?”

Two swings into the driver’s seat by the time Klaus is finished and pauses for what the brothers assume is Drama.

Then he turns to Klaus and the expression on his beautiful face with the subtle lights of the city over it makes Four’s world tilt on its axis. His Alpha is sad, the shine in his big eyes isn’t the usual glint of amusement nor flare of annoyance: something has cut Diego and the Omega instincts in Klaus rattle at the cage in distress. He looks at Klaus as if he didn’t want to dare speak, and Klaus had a feeling if he tried they’d fall out broken and chopped up from his stutter, one that only returned when life got to him.

Klaus’ legs drop from the dash and he reaches out, cupping Diego’s cheek before he can think of anything witty to say, and exhales softly when his mate leans into the touch and his deep eyes close.

This… This is what Reginald deprived them of. Touches that might have eased addictions and tempers. Bonded mates were balms to each others hurts.

“That” Ben whistles, eyes darting from each of his brothers. “Is my cue”

Then he disappears. Off who knew where, Klaus theorises he might have some ghost boyfriend in the afterlife.

“Hey gorgeous, everything okay in there?” He taps Diego’s temple. Slowly the Alpha’s eyes open again. Klaus’ chest flutters at how pretty Diego looks with moonlight across his cheekbone.

They can’t pretend like they’re functional. Like everything is fine between them because it isn’t, there’s so much they have to talk about and fight about and make up for. But for just a tiny ripped off corner of time they can ignore all that.

Diego doesn’t want to think about the implications of finding the monocle on Grace. Doesn’t want to think about what Luther would do to her if he ever found out, because for a man who called for family votes, he always overturned it when the result was against him. Grace stood no chance. No trial for an android.

So he kisses Klaus instead, catching his Omega’s top lip. He sinks into the clear scent of his mate and seeks comfort in it. It’s nice, wonderfully nice, not to smell drugs on Klaus and even though he can feel the buzz of his beloved’s skin itching for a hit to stave off the lows of coming down, nothing compares to a hundred percent Klaus. Klaus in a car full of Diego’s scents and zero contamination from anyone else, because Diego didn’t give anyone else rides in his car.

Cosy and safe in the Alpha nest, Klaus leans into the kiss eagerly, letting out a happy sound when he smells Diego’s pheromones soften and brighten away from fear and anxiety.

Not a nest. Klaus’ logical brain supplies. It’s a car that needs a vacuum.

Fuck off. Omega brain spits back, grazing Diego’s lip with his teeth.

Diego could get drunk off this. His hands on Klaus’ face, neck, in his hair and up his leg under the skirt. He loves the feel of Klaus’ hot hitching breath across his lips, wet tongue and the scrape of his nails over Diego’s cropped hair. He couldn’t give a shit if they’re avoiding their problems, he wants to get completely lost in Klaus and forget about everything else just for a short while.

And he’s hard. He’s so hard in his pants and it’s been so long since he slept with anyone outside of a Rut, he aches for that kind of clarity in sex mother nature clouded from him usually. Klaus isn’t in Heat, Diego isn’t spiking into a Rut. He’s hard because Klaus is so fucking sexy and he makes Diego feel so safe he could let go for once.

Klaus breaks the kiss, a hand to Diego’s chest. “Put your seat back, I wanna ride you”

Diego’s mouth goes dry at how blunt Klaus is, how heated his green eyes are and how flush with lust his mate’s pheromones are, and how was he going to refuse that?

It’s not the time to think how cute Diego looks nodding like that, but Klaus does anyway as he grins in response and leans down between Diego’s legs to crank the lever. Diego pushes himself back, gracelessly, giving Klaus enough room to scramble across and sit in his lap without hitting the steering wheel.

“We’re too tall for this” Diego mumbles into Klaus’ skin, sliding a hand over Klaus’ scalp to shield his crown from the roof he nearly hits.

Four arches his neck, sandwiching Diego’s hand between the roof and his head, moaning breathy at the luxurious scrape of teeth over his jugular. His back is bent awfully and their limbs are everywhere, Diego’s right about their mutual six foot selves being too long for the small compartment, but Klaus’ is too turned on and hot on the idea of riding cock in Diego’s accidental nest.

“Di, baby, we could always stop if you want?” Klaus says it like a dare, his eyes reflecting that. He meets Diego’s intense stare and delights in how his baby’s arm tightens around him with a growl.

“Not going anywhere” Diego rumbles possessively into the shell of Klaus’ ear, making him shiver.

Klaus leans away, chuckling at the sound of protest Diego makes, and slides his hands down his mate’s front until his fingers catch on the button of his fly. Shivers run through him at the feel of Diego’s calloused hands up his bare thighs, grabbing his ass under the skirt and kneading the soft flesh there, it’s distracting it a delicious way and if Klaus hadn’t already set his mind to getting on Diego then he’d insist his Alpha eat him out. Which, he reasons, isn’t too bad an alternative if Diego doesn’t have a…

“Condom?” Klaus asks, sweetly batting his lashes at Two as he takes the other in his hand. Diego’s head hits the rest with a moan, and Klaus is a patient guy when his view is this good, so he waits as he jerks Diego off slowly for an answer.

“Just… Just a sec baby” Diego flounders, eyes closed at the feel of Klaus’ hands on him and how wet his Omega is on his fingers, which slide into Four’s hole obscenely easy. A grin lights up on Diego’s face at the choked sound Klaus makes when he pushes two fingers into his cloaca, the Omega’s nose nuzzling his neck, and Diego takes control again to lean across to the glove box to where he knows he has at least one condom. Four braces himself on the seat when Diego leans too far, nearly dislodging them both, and laughs when Diego holds up a packet triumphantly so close to Klaus’ face his green eyes cross.

“That poor guy, all lonely in there” Seance pouts, taking the square off Diego with his teeth. He fumbles opening it when Diego’s fingers bury deep inside him again, working him over and over in a way Klaus appreciates. He’s not in heat, so he’s not nearly as wet with slick as he was the last dozen or so times they had fucked, so his toes are curling and his back arches for more reasons than just the pleasure of a partner who knows what he’s doing. “I think Allison’s skirt is dead”

He rolls the condom down on Diego, chuckling at the protests Diego makes at their sister’s name being dropped now of all times.

“My come and slick all over it? Hm. Nope this is non refundable” Klaus bites Diego’s earlobe and wiggles closer, purring happily when the Alpha gets the hint and pushes up his skirt for him, and moves his fingers out.

Diego holds Klaus face then, the latter groaning at his own slick on his cheek from Diego’s wet fingers, and they take a second to breathe in each other before Klaus sinks down onto him. It burns, even despite Diego working him, but it’s just what Klaus needs and he cries out at the blissful stretch, drunk on the rumble of Diego’s chest under his bracing hand.

They’ve never had sex with each other outside of a heat and they’ll be damned if they’re not doing it again as soon as they can. Klaus can feel every twitch and slide of Diego inside him, and Diego finds he’s able to focus better on the taste of Klaus’ skin on his tongue and how his mate looks panting softly above him when there isn’t a haze of scent and pleasure blocking his view. It doesn’t compare to times with other people and doesn’t compare to times together on heat and rut either. Being together with hips rolling and thrusting without much rhythm to it is a whole different kind of high and drunk all at the same time, but with all the harsh clarity Klaus usually strove to avoid.

Their foreheads drop together, sweaty and hot.

“Ah, ah fuck Diego. Fuck look at you, you look so beautiful” Klaus gushes, overwhelmed by how good everything feels. How much he and Diego had been missing out on. “Ah, you’re so gorgeous. So, so beautiful”

Diego moans, hand sliding through Klaus’ hair, and seems to glow under the shower of praise. No one complimented Diego enough Klaus decides, absolutely no one and he wanted tell Diego every day.

“You make me feel so good” His voice drags out on the last syllable, pushing down hard on Diego’s upward thrust. “Just you, Di. Fuck, no one else is this good. No one else makes me feel this good”

They won’t last long, they both know it, and Klaus rocks down roughly to chase the high. His head keeps hitting Diego’s knuckles into the roof of the car and his back aches from the angle, and his cock is painfully hard and untouched between his legs, all he can say over and over is ‘good’ because he’s hooked on how much Diego seems to like the word.

“Luh… Ah fuh-fuh-fuck Klaus, I luh… I luh-luh” Diego tries, over and over, dark brown eyes burning into his and Klaus finds himself nodding dumbly.

Something cracks, briefly making the pair jump, but the involuntary tightening of Klaus’ muscles at the sound pulls them both over the edge. Diego hides his face in Klaus’ neck as the Omega tightens around him, groaning, and barely holds on to move his spare hand from Klaus thigh to his cock to bring his mate crashing into his own orgasm.

Ever vocal, Klaus screams, his face similarly coming to rest at the juncture of Diego’s shoulder and neck.

Greedily they drink in breath, brains catching up with their bodies, and Diego blinks back into reality to the cute sound of Klaus giggling.

“Holy fuck” Klaus swears, leaning back. Diego catches him before he can hit the horn. Four kisses the tip of his nose. “We are doing that again”

Diego chuckles, pulling Klaus back closer for a kiss with a smug 'uh huh’ carried on a pant.

“Gunshots reported on the 400 block of Milton Avenue, Griddy’s Doughnuts” The radio buzzes in, freezing Diego’s mouth on Klaus’.

Klaus narrows his eyes at Diego, daring him, and let’s out a long bratty whine when he’s manhandled back into shotgun with a sigh by his mate.

“I’ll drop you off at my place on the way” Diego tells him, still wonderfully breathless, using tissues from the glove compartment to wrap up the condom, and then put himself away. He flicks Klaus the packet who accepts with a pout Diego is tempted to kiss off him. “Gotta go to work. But then… When I get back we are doing this again"

Klaus keeps his complaining to a bare minimum on the drive, cleaning himself off and filling up the bag Diego used for trash with more tissues than needed, because as annoyed as he is that his dinner out with Diego has been interrupted by vigilantism he’s quietly pleased he’s going to Diego’s and not the Academy.

And who is he kidding, the promise of getting fucked sober like that again is enough to brighten his whole year let alone spoiled date night.

* * *

 

Waking up to getting smacked in the face was not how Klaus wanted to be woken. A surprise blow job would have been wonderful, maybe a nice breakfast of eggs and bacon, or one of those sickeningly cute scenes from romcoms where the protagonist was romantically awoken with kisses to their neck and shoulders from their love.

Klaus would have preferred all of those over a palm slapping his cheek over and over.

"Klaus? Klaus, get up, we're going" A voice that's too high and annoying to be his Diego's deep, silky tones snips. Four blinks blearily, looking around Diego's boiler room, trying to place a timeline in his head.

Diego had dropped him off, kissed him with the promise of being back soon, and then... Ah, there it was. He'd tried to keep awake until Diego got back, but a mix of Ben's humming and the bone deep exhaustion of being fucked breathless and having one of the longest days of his life so far had the Omega curling down into the squeaky boiler room mattress like a kitten. Sunlight pours in from the overhead window instead of moonlight, and Four winces at the clanging sounds of his tiniest and angriest brother returned rifling through Diego's belongings as if he has the right to.

"Five?" Klaus stretches like a cat, kicking off the covers of Diego's uncomfortable bed. "Not the brother I hoped to wake up to... or the one I expected either"

He looks around, expecting Ben to appear. He doesn't. Under his breath Klaus wonders where it is Ben goes when he wasn't commentating on Klaus' every action.

The old man trapped in a child's body throws a black dress shirt at Klaus' face. "Put that on quickly"

"Why?" Klaus holds the garment up, obedient from slumber, and squints at it. It smells only faintly of Diego, which tells him it's been a long time since the Alpha wore it, and the brief blip in his attention from Five to the shirt is enough time for the Boy to find another suitable garment in the drawer he had heaved out from under the bed and flick that at Klaus' face too. This one is a pair of horribly wrinkled dress pants, a pair Klaus envisions Diego fidgeting in awkwardly on a first date waiting for Eudora to arrive. "Ouch, stop that. Not the face, dude"

Five glares at him. "I need you to pretend to be my Omegan" One eyebrow arches. "Don't look at me like that. Get dressed quickly and meet me upstairs, I'll explain more on the way"

Without another word to his brother, Five blinks away in a flash of light leaving Klaus alone to dress. It's alone now that Klaus processes everything and with a grumble starts to do as he was told. Diego's dress pants are too short and the torso of the shirt is baggy on Klaus' bird-like shoulders, but there's something pleasant about peeling off his own skinny leathers and crop top to instead shuck on his Alpha's clothes, even if those clothes clearly haven't been worn in years. There's even dust on them, Klaus notes, batting his hands down his front to brush the worst of it off. Diego has smaller shoes than him, so Klaus figures his own sandals will have to do for whatever plan his funny little brother wants him to partake in and, intent on making Five wait on him, Klaus peeks through Diego's makeshift kitchen to find something to sate the grumble in his stomach.

He'd be worried about Diego's lack of appearance if it wasn't in both his and Diego's natures to become distracted by anything and everything under the sun, and follow that instead. For him it had been drugs or the hunt for a new sexual exploit, and for Diego it was breaking bones and crackling skulls.

The look on Five's face when Klaus emerges up the stairs ten minutes later munching on an apple, in a wrinkled suit and black and diamante sandals, officially lands itself in Klaus' all time list of favourite expressions ever pulled by a family member.

"Chop, chop. Cab's waiting" Five seethes, ushering Klaus through the boxing gym, which at ten am is virtually empty. Klaus is quietly impressed he slept as long as he did without ghostly interruption. Maybe there was something to the mumbo jumbo about sleeping in the scents of one's mate easing the mind.

Klaus takes his time, grinning to himself when Five makes aborted moves like he can't decide if he wants to touch his skinny brother's dusty suit or not. "You know this Omegan thing, way too formal. If you're my kid you're calling me Oma, oh wait no! Omamgam"

If he were Luther, Five would have torn the cab door off it's hinges. "Omamgam is not a thing any child has ever called their Omegan. If it makes you shut up and move fast then I'll concede to Oma"

A stranger dodges the flying apple core Klaus tosses with a yelp, and Klaus finally slips into the cab with a quick wink to Five. He blesses the driver with one too, serene in the face of not one but two impatient companions, and makes himself comfortable on the sticky seats while Five leans forward to give the driver the address. Some laboratory, Klaus hears but doesn't pay attention to.

"So" He drawls when Five flops back. "You need moi to pretend to be your beloved Oma. Pray tell?"

Five doesn't look happy about it, which delights him. "I couldn't find Luther, even if I knew where Diego was he's the wrong race" He ignores Klaus' mock scandalised gasp. "Shush, I'm white, Klaus, Diego isn't. You are. So you, therefore, were the next best thing to Luther"

"You're not the first to have said it" Klaus teases, making light of the many times Reginald made all of them feel inferior to their eldest brother. He gives Five a break and waits for him to finish after Five shoots him a particularly acidic glare.

"We are going to go inside this building and get the records pertaining to the owner of this eye" Klaus' eyebrows raise when Five shows him a fake eye popped from his pocket, as if that's a thing that happens. "Once we have that we can leave and you will never tell anyone else that I asked this of you"

They turn a sharp corner and Five hisses when Klaus flows with the movement, sliding along the seats and squashing his smaller sibling against the cab door.

"What's our cover story?" Klaus asks. "And how are you planning on repaying me?"

"I'm not funding your drug habit, if that's what you're asking" Five snaps. "And what do you mean, cover story?"

Working as a cab driver, Rich saw and heard some weird things. You name it, he'd gone through it, day or night. But the day an underage Beta and an Omega got into his cab was one of the weirdest to date, perhaps ever. The old Alpha had babies all grown up with babies of their own, all with their own dynamics and families he doesn't pretend to fully understand, because back in his day Omegas and their pups didn't go anywhere without the Alpha being somehow involved. He'd picked up Omegas and driven them home, accepting payments from their Alphas or parents, he'd even had to decline rides given to Omegas desperate for a trip back while their heat was in the throes: he'd be a dead Alpha if his Ester scented another Omega on his neck the moment he walked back through the door.

So it shocked him hearing the pair of them list of tall tales about a single Omegan raising his pup, the Alpha no longer in the picture, and allowing the rude pup to speak to him like he did. He bit his tongue a few times, stuck between wanting to mind his own business and wanting to reprimand the pup for speaking to his Oma like that. He even found himself fuming for the rest of the day on how any self respecting Alpha could get an Omega pregnant and then just leave.

It wasn't how things were done in his day. No sir.

And he wasn't even going to touch on the fact that half way on the car ride Omega started talking to thin air like he'd suddenly gone bat shit, and that instead of making another sassy comment about it the pup just played with a damn eyeball and a butterfly knife he's pretty sure grown people weren't allowed to have in public let alone pups.

Just wait until Ester heard about all this. This new modern families and their bizarre dynamics, they were all crazy. Should go back to the old ways if you asked him.

* * *

 

Patch jumps when a gloved palm slaps onto her desk.

"Ten thirty, Eudora? You had them leave me in custody until ten thirty?" Diego moans, at least that's what his attempt at a growl sounds to her uninterested ears. "I had places to be"

She levels a look at him. "Don't call me that. You were the one who trespassed on a crime scene and impersonated an officer. You're lucky you're getting out this early, Fuerte. I catch you doing that again and you will do jail time"

The Alpha woman falls on his last name to distance them and it seems to work, because Diego paces for only a moment before dropping down into the seat next to her with a mumbled 'Patch' that has her back straightening, pleased he actually listened.

"You know I could help with this" He tells her, and Patch glares at him. "You get the tow truck guy?"

"Obstruction of Justice" She reminds him testily. "Thought you said you had somewhere to be, Fuerte. Go"

Diego flaps his hand. "Klaus probably took off by now, we'll catch up later" She chokes on the sip of coffee she happened to take in that moment. "You need to relax a little, Patch. You like playing by the rules, but you live for putting the scumbags away. So why don't you put that badge down for one night and you come out on the streets with me? Without all this bullshit"

She makes a disgusted sound. "That sounds so fun, yeah we'll do that No, listen. This 'bullshit' is what gets convictions in a court of law, in case you forgot that when you got yourself kicked out of police academy. Now let's back up, did you just say Klaus? As in your mate Klaus?"

It's none of her business, she knows it isn't, but she also can't help but be concerned given the history she knows is there. Diego hadn't told her much when they were together but what she had managed to glean from him from her questions about his bite, is that Klaus had really messed him up. What happened between them had been enough to tear their bond a part to her understanding, even though Diego admitted to her that before he'd started a relationship with her he still met up with his mate to help him through his heats, and it worries her to hear mention of Klaus again. She'd been mad when he first let slip that his meet ups with Klaus began again mere weeks after they split up, Eudora had tried to reason with the love struck Alpha that his mate had been doing fine for the couple of years they were together, getting through his heats either alone as modern Omegas liked to or with other partners, and was probably just using him.

After how well that attempted intervention had ended, Eudora knew better than to launch into it again now, especially at her work place. Concerned friend or not, she knew she had to tread carefully here.

"He came back?" Eudora prods, narrowing her eyes when Diego ducks his head. She scents him, something she rarely did without permission, and catches a whiff of sex that once used to turn her on when linked to him now repulsed her. "It was for his heat right? Is he there now? Do you need to go help him or-"

"His heat is over, he had it over a month ago now" Diego mumbles. He caught the flare of her police trained sniffer nose, there's no point in pretending. "Last night was different"

Rodriguez swears at the desk next to them when Patch slaps her hand down.

"Come on, Diego!" Eudora whines, dropping back to his first name now the topic has changed. This is too personal for last names. "You say that every time, he's just..."

The detective catches herself before she once again makes the mistake of accusing a man she's never met of using Diego. Maybe this time she can get through to her friend, but not if she sends him off into the deep end again.

"Look, talk to Kim. He can help you out with this" Her friend laughs, harsh and unkind, at the mention of their domestic abuse liaison, but she drives on. "I'm serious. I say this as your friend, you can't let him keep doing this to you. It breaks your heart every single time. Twice a year without fail. We both know it's not for biological necessity"

Diego is shutting down from her, she can see it. "No, it isn't. Which means something"

"What it means, Diego, is that I see stuff like this every single day" She finishes softly. "It's a myth that Alphas can't get hurt like this. I see more and more cases coming in of Omegas taking advantage of the biological devotion we have for them and I hate seeing you go through this"

He stands up abruptly, his chair scraping loudly on the ground. If the bullpen weren't already hushed from nosy colleagues listening in Eudora knows he would have silenced the whole room.

"Nice talk, Patch" In a storm of angry pheromones and heavy glares, her friend and ex leaves without another word.

Eudora sighs, dropping her head into her hands.

She growls when she hears Beeman rolls over on his spin chair.

"Well that crashed and burned" He mock whispers, wisely sliding away when she glares at him.

* * *

 

Unknowingly, Diego's thoughts mirror Klaus' when he arrives back to his apartment and his nose is filled with the smells of the wrong brother. Instead of Klaus' familiar smokey, warm scent he could smell wet fabric and lemon candies.

Even though he knows it's Luther, Diego flicks a knife through the tiny crack in the doorway, grinning when he hears his brother yelp.

"I could smell it was you" Diego greets, kicking his own door open and staring down at Luther who's made himself at home. He doesn't like Luther here sitting in a chair Diego is more accustomed to seeing Klaus perched in sideways, than the lumbering number One who hardly seems to fit in the armchair.

"What the hell? You could have killed me" The Beta complains, touching his ear.

The Alpha jumps down the steps three at a time, and pours himself a glass of water. He's disappointed but not surprised Klaus wasn't still around. The place still smells enough of him that Diego thinks Klaus might have stayed the night: going by the distinctive top crop and skirt sitting in the corner, how his bed sheets are still in disarray, unlike how he militantly liked to leave them, and that all his drawers, including the one under his bed, have been pulled open and sifted through. The thought of Klaus wandering around in his clothes is... adorable. So cute Diego's cheeks heat up.

"If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead" He says, downing his drink in one and then leaving it in the sink. He ignores Luther's sarcastic comments about his home as he stoops to pick up Klaus' clothes, biting his lip at the stains on the skirt, and starts to rearrange the storm Klaus seemed to have run through his small living area. "I like it"

"So why didn't you tell me?" Luther starts, rising and rapping a knuckle on a poster. Diego knows what he means but asks anyway. "That you were fighting the night dad died. I checked with the guys out there too"

Diego slams a drawer shut. After Eudora, he's really not in the mood for this.

"Shouldn't have to prove my innocence" He snips. He's not surprised when he turns and sees Luther looks embarrassed.

"I know, I just thought that-"

The Alpha leans in close, jaw set, and almost laughs at how his brother shies back. Even with super strength, a power he used over his siblings constantly, Luther considered an Alpha something threatening just by virtue of them being an Alpha. "Yeah. I know what you thought. You thought your nasty, feral little Alpha brother viciously ripped up our poor Beta dad like the animal he is"

One's cheeks flush indignantly, but he doesn't deny it.

"You checked in with Allison? She's Alpha too. I'm guessing you think she went full Haze and tore that asshole's throat out too, hm?"

"Of course not!" Luther argues.

Diego barks a laugh. "Of course not!" He mocks Luther's tone. "Gimme a break, Luther"

"She was in LA, she couldn't hav-"

"Oh my god" Two swings away, covering his face just to do something with his hands other than hit Luther. "You mean to say even though you 'love' Allison with all your fat, dumb ass heart you think if she'd been physically close enough to, she'd have killed dad?" 

Luther has no right, absolutely no right, to pout at Diego's question. For a man who liked to claim he was mature and the leader, One all too often reverted back to displaying juvenile behaviours. It frustrated Diego, more so because he knew why Luther did it. Reginald never let Luther grow up and be his own person: while everyone else flew off and found themselves their own lives, Luther stayed in the house as Reginald's good little number One.

He can't stay furious with Luther knowing that.

"She wouldn't, I know she wouldn't. And what's with the quotation marks? I do love Allison" Luther sounds honestly, profoundly, upset. "I love her like you love _Klaus_ "

Diego makes an aborted sound, close to a snarl but just restrained enough that he doesn't headbutt Luther when he rounds back on him. "Ah nope. No. You never say his name. Ever. Don't ever say his name like that and don't ever compare what I have with him to your own bag of crazy with Allison, they're not even remotely comparable"

If Luther ever said Klaus' name so confused, like he couldn't imagine caring so deeply for the skinny junkie, Diego would end up going back on all his claims not to be feral and hit Luther so hard he'd likely break his hand.

The taller brother exhales. "Fine. Speaking of, I wanted to know if... Four, had had any progress getting into contact with dad"

Diego's too annoyed to find it funny that Luther takes his orders not to say Klaus' name literally.

"No, he hasn't. He tried but no dice" Diego turns away from Luther again, moving around him to reset his bed sheets. Unable to help it, he lifts them to his nose and takes a deep breath of Klaus' scent mingled with his own on them, blocking out the repugnant odour of the Beta with him. Diego hated lemons, although he has no idea if he hates them because Luther smells like them, or if he associates negative feelings with lemons. "So you can leave now"

"Can you get him to try again, please Diego. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't so important" Luther looks pained when Diego pulls a face at him.

"Me? Look Luther, it won't make a difference" He refuses to be embarrassed by sniffing his bed sheets because they smell of Klaus, in front of Luther. His cheeks burn despite this. "Klaus' powers do their own shit, I could say all my pleases and thank yous, they won't care. Even if they did I'm not doing that to Klaus, I won't ask him to"

Diego has known Luther long enough to recognise the difference between pompous ignorance and Luther's genuine ignorance.

"Well, I don't mean for you to ask" One says it like it's Diego who sounds dumb. Diego raises his eyebrows. "Do your thing"

"My... _thing_?" Two asks slowly, completely lost.

Luther shrugs, awkward. "You know"

The Alpha purses his lips, sucking his teeth and shakes his head. "No. No I don't"

"Oh for the love of... The Alpha thing. You know how you guys can make your Omegas do stuff" Luther makes a gesture with his fingers, wiggling them like a mystic. "I want to know if you could make Klaus get sober and contact dad with it"

An excruciating silence stretches out between them.

"Get out" Diego's voice cracks like a whip.

"What?"

"You really don't know shit do you? Huh, Spaceboy?" Two blows up. "I can't control Klaus! There's no fucking magical puppet string I can pull to force him to do anything for me or anyone else, that's not a thing Alphas can do. The only person who can is Allison and that has nothing to do with her being an Alpha. Now get, the fuck, out"

Luther's brow furrows in confusion. He looks down at Diego and doesn't see his usual angry brother. This Diego looks upset, the kind of angry where he could see tears welling in the corners of Diego's eyes and neither he nor anyone else in the house would ever dare mention them to number Two unless they wanted a knife thrown at their face. He's messed up big time somewhere and he can't place where. Shame burns in his chest and he wants to fix things, but despite having extensive teachings in sciences he's completely stumped, and within seconds of opening his mouth he finds his own eyes burning.

Almighty Number One and Fearsome Number Two. Staring at each other trying not to cry, under a boxing gym.

Diego deflates. "Just get out Luther. I'm leaving and you better not be here when I get back"

Luther watches Diego leave with fists clenched. He looks down, ashamed of how their conversation went, and notices on the bedside something he hadn't seen when he first came in and nosed through his brother's so called apartment.

It's a framed picture of them all as children. Five is there, Ben is alive. Even Vanya was tucked into the corner between Five and Allison. Their smiles are wide and toothy, they can't be any older than eight, and Luther can vividly remember Grace taking it when Vanya got sad about being left out of another formal family portrait again. Tacked on the frame with tape is a reel from a mall booth, and running down it are four pictures of Diego and Klaus posing making silly faces at the camera. In the final one Klaus has Diego's face in his hands and is kissing his cheek, and even small in blotchy ink Luther can see Diego blushing brilliantly and peeking as best he can at Klaus. They look much older than in the group picture, mid teens maybe, and Luther can't place when they could have been taken.

He peels it carefully off of the frame and turns it over, noticing there's a thread woven bracelet taped to the back alongside a handwritten note.

> The Best Night Ever - October 2nd '07.

A day after their collective eighteenth birthday. And almost two years _after_ Diego and Klaus' bite.

* * *

 

"He left?" Five seethes when they leave the building, eyes seeking out their cab. "I paid him to wait"

Klaus snorts and exchanges a grin with Ben, who delights in seeing Five so riled.

"Maybe your toy scared him off?" Klaus says, making himself comfortable on the steps while he watches Five try to flag down another cab. He spits out another piece of glitter he finds in his teeth, remembering the horrified look on the man's face when a 'delicate' Omega smashed his own forehead in with a snow globe. "I saw him eyeing it. Hm, get it?"

Ben looks offended. "No comment"

"What? What? What's the big deal with this eye, anyway?" Seance asks when his pun garners not even a glare from Five. At the question Five turns to level an intense stare on Klaus, as if the weight of the entire world was on his shoulders.

"There is someone out there who's going to lose an eye in the next seven days, and they're gonna bring about the end of life on this Earth as we know it" The Boy says it was a gravitas that contradicts his tiny frame and schoolboy shorts.

Klaus thinks about that for a moment, then clicks his tongue. "Yeah, can I get that twenty bucks, like, now, or what?"

Over the top of Ben's fond sigh, Five looks livid. "The apocalypse is coming, and all you can think about is getting high?"

"Well, I'm also quite hungry. Tummy's a-rumblin'" Klaus doesn't bother explaining that he's been sober for well over a day by now, and before that a whole month. He knows Five wouldn't care or believe him, but he can see how pleased it makes Ben, who wiggles on the spot in a way Klaus knows is a sign of how happy he is. At least one of his brothers is happy, Klaus thinks.

At least, Ben was until Five growls. "You're useless. You're all useless!"

"Hey" Six protests, unheard. Klaus has done incredibly well, if he does say so.

Klaus waggles a finger at Five. "You need to lighten up, old man. I've just now realised why you're so uptight. You must be horny as hell! All those years by yourself. It's gotta screw with your head, being alone."

"Well I wasn't alone" Klaus hums in question. "Her name was Delores. We were together for over thirty years"

Klaus and Ben's eyebrows shoot up.

"Thirty years? Oh, wow!" Klaus can't imagine being with someone that long, Ben not included. He and his brother had only been constant companions for the last nine or so years, a mere fraction of the time Five boasted.

His treacherous mind wonders if he and Diego would ever get it together and try to make it work as a real bonded couple, or if Reginald's poison really had ruined it all for them. Diego on his mind and the near memories of Five introducing Klaus to the doctor as his Oma had Klaus' brain spiralling off in another direction.

"You know my kid would be about your age now if…"

Five snaps. "I’m not-"

Klaus flapped his hand. "I know, I know. But physically, you’re the age they would have been"

Five quietens. "If our beloved father hadn’t been a controlling monster"

"Yeah" Four trails off. For what feels like a long time, but in reality is likely no more than a minute or so, Four, Five and Six sit together in utter silence.

Then, unexpectedly, Five slaps Klaus on the thigh. Ben looks scandalised on his behalf but Klaus is just mystified blinking up at Five, who doesn't seem to realise he wasn't suppose to physically hit melancholy out of his brother. Five of course, had never been there for all the times no one could get through to Klaus, he hadn't been there to see how much Diego had wanted to jump in and hadn't been permitted, so the others fruitlessly tried instead. Aside from Mom's gentle words and Diego's touch, Five is the only person who's broken Klaus out of a downward spiral.

"Hitting is not the answer" Ben scolds, as if reading Klaus' mind. "Don't get any ideas, Klaus"

"Come on" Five sounds uncomfortable. He doesn't go as far as offer Klaus a hand up but the hand twitch letting it be known he considered it is enough for the Omega. "Let's get back to the house"

* * *

 

Having everyone back in the house feels strange to Luther, like he’s going to blink and they’ll all be gone again before he had the chance to appreciate them being close again. He doesn’t have the nose Alphas and Omegas have but he’s sure there’s something to be said for the scents in the air: the life that filled the halls, that was absent for so long before he was sent to the moon. It smells like a home again.

He doesn’t want to let it go. Maybe if he tries harder this time they’ll stay.

Gaze resting on his brothers Luther thinks about what Diego had said earlier that day. Everything Luther knew about secondary sexes was based off of his father’s teachings, but Diego seemed so sure Reginald was wrong about it all. He and Two disagreed and fought about a lot of things, but not this, Luther doesn’t think. He can’t imagine Diego would lie about Klaus, not when he curls himself up around the all too skinny Omega in his sleep and hides his face in Klaus’ neck.

Luther looks away from the inside of Diego’s room when he hears Allison walk past, and puts a finger to his lips at her curious look. The Alpha woman peeks around him, and Luther marvels at her smile when she notices the mates sleeping on the bed.

Allison quietly closes the door and winces when Luther’s weight squeaks one of the floorboards on their walk down to their end of the dormitories.

“Good night, Luther” Allison bids him, and just before she can close the door he reaches out. He stares at her patient face, putting together the words he wants to say.

One clears his throat. “Um… If you have a minute, Allison. I was wondering if you could clear something up for me”

She blinks, surprised, but offers an arm into her room. “Sure, come in”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little bit of context for this. Eudora doesn't know Diego is a Hargreeves, because I feel like that's something he wanted to hide in his days from the police academy, but he never got to telling her the truth later on even after he dropped Fuerte (since we see his name 'Hargreeves' on the boxing poster). How she hasn't made the connection between mates called Diego and Klaus, who have some trauma together, and the infamous tell all about the Hargreeves mates in Vanya's book, I don't know. Plot holes. Thou shalt ignore them.
> 
> Eudora completely has the wrong idea with Diego and Klaus. Because she hasn't met Klaus, doesn't know the whole story, and has only seen the aftermath on Diego she has a bias opinion against him, that WILL change don't worry. She sees a lot of abuse in the job she does, she's seen so many people hurt by loved ones, so it's not surprising she thinks Diego is the same. Trust me she will be taking back everything she thought about Klaus once she knows the truth, and they are going to be friends because I think they'd be great friends. I'm so mad they only met for 2 seconds in the show. She saved his life!!
> 
> I picked Fuerte as the surname Patch thinks Diego has because it means Bravery and I feel like Grace probably helped him pick it while he was applying for the police academy. She loves her brave boy.
> 
> Oma is a cute name for an Omega parent, used regardless of what their first sex is, that I've seen in a few different ABO fics, so I unfortunately can't take credit or give credit because I'm not sure who used it first. Omegan is the formal term, like Mother or Father is to mom/dad etc. The terms mother and father, and all similar, are in this world exclusively used for beta parents and it's highly unusual to use them in reference to omegas and alphas. This means that Grace is programmed as a beta, because Reginald is one of those assholes who thinks people with secondary sexes in this world are 'animals' and he would 'never allow the children to be raised by one'. Pups is in this world an archaic term for the child of an Alpha, Omega or both. It's considered incredibly offensive by some and regular lingo to others, such as Rich the cab driver, who's an Alpha himself.
> 
> Omega rights in this world I've timed similar to how technology is in the show. It's outdated and no where near what we might think it should be. Omegas have only been able to handle their own heats in the last ten or so years with their version of the sexual liberation movement. What Reginald did to Klaus was at the time considered well within his rights as Klaus' father and chaperone, but hasn't stood up now and I'll be touching on some of the consequences he justifiably suffered after Vanya's book came out: because there was consequences, I promise. Reginald got his comeuppance from the public, trust me!
> 
> This stage in Omega rights is also why Luther knows very little, in fact most of what he thinks he knows is just old myths and bullshit Reginald fed him that he was then after too sheltered to realise he had to change. Don't worry Allison will be educating him on the reality of Alpha and Omega bonds, and how they work. Allison, Diego, Klaus and Vanya had to find their own way after they left home, learning about themselves, and Five knows differently because I like to think he found a massive section about secondary dynamics in the library he found Vanya's book in and educated himself. We all know Five would HATE to carry around misinformation in his head when he can find out the truth. (You also bet if Five knew the driver was calling him a 'pup' he'd have snapped his neck. Five is a legend in the show and in this reality too).
> 
> Five and Klaus are hilarious together and I love writing them, Klaus probably teases Five more in this than he does in the show, just because I fucking love that part of their dynamic so I've exaggerated it. Sue me.
> 
> Finally! The bracelet stuck to the photos Diego has on his bedside is real! A fan noticed that David and Robert appear to have matching thread woven bracelets, and I just had to incorporate that.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone commenting on this fic!!! I love all of you so much, your comments give me motivation, they feed this story!

> _I imagine you might think my family are dirty for what you now know about them. I'd like to say that you couldn't be more wrong. Although we were raised to call each other siblings, our individual perspectives on one another differ from person to person. It's so easy for someone not in a situation like our own to cast judgement, but the thing is no one else could understand as well as we can. While I may view my brothers as just that, this does not mean Allison sees Luther as her brother, or that Diego and Klaus ever saw each other as anything but sweethearts._
> 
>  
> 
> _In a situation such as ours, seven unrelated children growing up isolated from the world with no one else to turn to but each other, we are at liberty to pick and choose how we view one another. On the one hand we call each other family but that's in much the same way as a group of friends cast out from their biological families. We have in common more things than any of us would like to admit, much more than the mothers who sold us and the man who bought us. Reginald raised us to be comrades, teammates, and would refuse to acknowledge anything so personal and affectionate as family monikers. It really wasn't until we were four and our nanny, Grace, arrived that we had that terminology applied to us: Grace called herself her mother instead of our nanny, and called us siblings. Between her, and Reginald and Dr. Pogo, we had so many conflicting information on what we were suppose to mean to each other that I dare anyone not to be as confused as we were, or deny how that upbringing might have invited the dynamics we have now._
> 
>  
> 
> _The one benefit of Reginald was his privacy at least. When Diego and Klaus bonded, his public statement that their bites and bands marked bonds to other people was a blessing in disguise, no matter how much the pair may have hated it at the time, because I have no doubt you- the world- would have torn them a part when they were too fragile to handle it. Maybe it's a bad idea for me to reveal now the truth of it all, but in this new age of rights for those of us with secondary sexes and with the full story to go with it, I hope you dear reader might hold in your heart more empathy for my brothers than you might have had you known the truth over a decade ago._

 

* * *

 

Diego wakes to the luxurious smoky scent of Klaus filling his nose, the grounding of feeling his mate’s bony frame in his arms, and the tight sensation of the Omega’s ass pressed in close to his hips.

He can hear Klaus’ deep breaths, still asleep and calm after the nightmare he woke them both up with a few hours before, and thinks about what he’s going to do. One part of him wants to carefully pry Klaus off and climb over so he can sneak away to get changed. Maybe see how mom was, help her make breakfast possibly. The other part of him, straining in his pants and wetting his boxer briefs, wins out with the command to kiss behind Klaus’ ear. It’s his left, it’s dissatisfying not to be able to lick the bite without turning Klaus over, but the lack of drugs tainting Four’s aura makes up for it.

Experimentally Diego rolls his hips into Klaus, tiny and curious, and he angles to watch his mate’s reactions. Klaus’ pretty lashes flutter and Diego smiles, nipping kisses across Klaus’ neck as he watches his baby slowly rise from the fog of sleep.

The Omega purrs. “S'nice… Want this yester'day”

Diego parses what Klaus said through the sleepy slur and chuckles, sucking a small red mark under Klaus’ jaw bone. “Hm? What’s that, baby?”

They fell asleep in their clothes, Diego only bothering to strip off his harness, and now he regrets not insisting they take more layers off. His shirt on Klaus has ridden up in the night, exposing his pale skin for Diego to stroke his hand up, admiring the slope of Klaus’ waist, but it’s uncomfortable for him, he can’t imagine how uncomfortable Klaus is in it.

He slides his other arm down from where Klaus used it as a pillow, ignoring the pins and needles screaming along it, and moves around so he’s caging Klaus in. He grips the two edges of the shirt, fingers between the buttons, and yanks.

The cheap shirt rips and Klaus laughs, delightfully awake and preening. He goes pliant and sweet, watching with a heady gaze as Diego manoeuvres him on the bed so gently so the Alpha can slip the shirt off his thin shoulders. Where the shirt is thrown to Klaus doesn’t check, too fixed on the feel of Diego’s warm hands moving to the pants and sliding a finger along the waist band.

“You gonna fuck me?” Klaus breathes, the words barely there. He lifts his head a bare inch to brush his lips over Diego’s chin, loving the feel of his stubble, in an open mouthed kiss. A kiss followed by a lax mouthing down his jaw and neck, the sensation so light goosebumps rise along Diego’s arms. He can feel Klaus’ hand hovering near his head and neck, floating and only barely touching. It’s like fire.

Diego’s hands are firmly in Klaus’ pants, not surprised to see his mate still hadn’t opted to wear any underwear, and he kneads the soft plush of Klaus’ ass. Klaus had bathed but if Diego breathes deep enough he can still detect sex underlining Klaus’ perfume. His sex. Even though they had used a condom, so Diego knows there’s nothing within Klaus of his, the Alpha in him rumbles at the thought of a part of him inside Klaus. He doesn’t know where it came from but he lets himself melt into fantasy, deciding to analyse that quirk later.

“You want me to?” Diego asks back, licking into Klaus mouth before the other can answer. Calloused hands rub up Klaus stomach, tickling, and settle on a nipple each. He smiles when Klaus gasps across his lips, his body shifting closer as Diego languidly plays with the nubs.

Klaus whines, nodding along as he’s swept away by the safe scents Diego is surrounding him with. Those plush lips close to his, those elegant piano playing fingers flicking at his hard nipples, and fuck, Diego’s clothed cock grinding against his hip. The Omega exhales shakily and his fingers finally grip Diego’s short hair.

“If you want me to fuck you, I’m going to need to hear you say it” He’s pleased with himself for not stuttering once. It keeps him in the moment.

Klaus turns so his back is against Diego’s chest again, soft ass pressing against the tent in Diego’s pants instead of hard hip, and he tips his head back so it reads perfectly over Diego’s collar to shoulder.

“Fuck me, Diego. Please” Klaus insists, longing for anything more than just rutting.

He’s already trying to kick off the ridiculous pants when Diego roughly pulls them down, making the Omega preen happily. Klaus flicks his legs about until he can only feel the fabric clinging to one ankle and settles for that. He’s naked now and Diego is frustratingly dressed.

“Hold onto this” Diego whispers, moving Klaus’ hands up to the bed frame and away from his attempts to strip Diego off. Klaus grips the metal poles tightly, as if his life depended on it. The move has Klaus rolling more onto his stomach, with his ass displayed when Diego tosses away the bed covers, and Klaus lets himself be moved around more so his left leg is hitched high, knee to his chest.

His Alpha tickles a hand down his spine, down the soft cleft of his cloaca, and Klaus shudders when Diego’s long fingers slide in with a loud squelch. Two mouths, open and wet, at the skin of Klaus’ back and listens to his baby moan. God, how wet he’s made his Omega.

Diego pumps his fingers, crooking them and scissoring them, and makes sure to press them hard against Klaus’ walls to draw out appreciative pants and moans from his mate.

“Could you come just from this? Do I even need to fuck you?”

“Yes. Yes you do” Klaus hisses, pushing down on Diego’s hand. “I need your cock. Diego you better fuck me until I’m crying or else..”

He’s tempted to tease and ask ‘or else what?’ but refrains. Klaus sounds wrecked already and Diego loves it. This Klaus hadn’t the patience for roleplay games or kinks, this Klaus dropped the tease he usually so loved and stared at Diego over his shoulder with determination in his sparkling, and beautifully sober, eyes.

Their lips meet in a chaste kiss, then Diego is gone down the bed to reach his discarded harness. He’s fairly sure there ought to be something they can use in many hidden pockets within the leather straps, Diego wasn’t as promiscuous as Klaus but hardly chaste like Luther. Klaus sits up on his elbows to watch, and Diego curses loudly.

Klaus whines. “Tell me you have a condom”

Diego clicks his tongue. “The thing is…”

He watches Klaus flop off the bed and start hunting through his room, yanking out drawers Diego hasn’t used in years. “You’ve gotta have one in here somewhere. I know they go out of date but those things have tons of time on them”

“Klaus. Klaus there won’t be anything” Diego is amused and flattered Klaus thinks he could have slipped something like that by Reginald. Who filmed them twenty four hours of the day and would have certainly never allowed for guests of any kind. “I don’t even remember what’s in that drawer so don’t bother”

Klaus’ pout shouldn’t make him smile but it does, and Diego reaches for him. Like a moth to flame Klaus moves closer, falling into Diego’s touch easily, and sighs as he sits in his mate’s lap. Diego kisses up his throat and strokes up his sides, unhappy at how many ribs he can feel.

Then he pulls away, laughing as he dodges Klaus’ flailing arms.

“I’ll go get some” Diego promises, kissing Klaus’ forehead. “I’ll come right back, there’s a store right down the block”

Four waves him off, pretending to be annoyed. “Go forth my knight, and return a. fucking s.a.p”

He lies there, naked, watching Diego stumble off the bed and hoist up his harness wondering why his mate thinks it’s necessary. Not that he’s complaining, the leather straps make for an appealing look on him, and as soon as they’re clipped on Diego flashes Klaus a quick grin and is gone, out the door and thundering down the stairs.

Klaus checks the clock and groans. Only Diego would wake him up before eight in the morning. This is earlier than Klaus has risen in… Years.

* * *

 

"Do you seriously still not understand the chain of custody? If you touch it, I can't use it"

Diego grins when he hears a familiar frustrated voice behind him. He stands and turns to Eudora, cheerful in the face of how annoyed she looks.

He holds up his pen, a gunshot shell spinning on the end of it. "Let me save you some time running ballistics. These nine-millimetres? They haven't been manufactured since..."

"1963, I know. They match casings found at a murder scene last night, Ishmael's Towing"

Diego winces, instinctively thinking he might have been able to help the victim. When her last words register, his eyebrows raise in surprise. "The driver?"

She nods, sighing regretfully. "Found him hanging from the ceiling. Looks like he must have known something after all"

"It's a shame nobody told you to go talk to him" He straightens. The scent wafting off him is the only thing that stops her from slapping cuffs on him then and there. She's caught the same undertone on him before, tell tale of his mate he seemed so adamant wasn't using and abusing him, and smelling it on him now drains away her ire.

The detective pinches the bridge of her nose. "In the span of 24 hours, I've had attacks in three different places across town. Whatever this is, whoever this is, they're not slowing down. So, if you really give a shit and you've got any fresh ideas, I'm all ears"

Diego thinks. "The guy's kid, in the doughnut shop?"

"I've got units tracking the extended family in case anyone goes after him" Eudora shoots it down instantly. Wherever the kid was, she hoped he was safe.

"Surveillance footage?" The other Alpha continues, peering around to see any visible cameras.

"Unfortunately whoever broke in and did this covered their tracks: the footage is gone. All we have to go on is from CCTV from the store across the street that caught two shooters fleeing the premises, wearing, get this, creepy kids' masks" Eudora wrinkles her brow at the memory of the footage shown to her.

Diego raises his eyebrows, creeped out by the image too, and barely refrains from rolling his eyes when he spots Beeman coming up from behind Eudora looking delighted to see the pair of them in close proximity.

"Hey Diego" Beeman greets, he sniffs because he's a nosy asshole in Diego's opinion, and perks up. "Interesting cologne there buddy, finally moved on from Patch eh?"

He makes the mistake of moving to slug Diego on the arm, as if they're pals, and squawks when the Alpha quickly slaps his wrist aside. It's only the dozens of police officers around them and Eudora's warning growl, at him or Beeman he isn't sure, that stops Diego from grabbing Beeman by the throat and slamming him into a clothing rail.

"Leave it, Fuerte" Eudora says low. "You're not suppose to be here anyway"

Diego holds up his hands, backing off and out to leave the crime scene.

"You go fill out your forms while I go hunt these animals down" He parts with, making sure to level a glare at Beeman. Satisfyingly the other man squeaks and steps behind Eudora, who looks at her partner like he's insane.

Getting out into the parking lot, Diego reaches his car and pauses, leaning in close to the windshield. He jams his thumb in a crack he spots, squinting at it as if doing so would help him place where it came from. It hadn't been there yesterday, he checked his car over daily, but he doesn't recall any rocks getting kicked up by the wheels. His car wasn't the neatest or cleanest but he did take some pride in her, so finding the glass cracked bothers him. Hell, maybe with dad's inheritance he can pay for it to be repaired, among a dozen other things his beloved car needed doing.

He huffs and gets in, careful not to slam his door and worsen the crack, and starts her up.

Diego gets half way back to the academy before swearing and abruptly spinning the wheel around, ignoring the honk of other cars as he does so.

He forgot the condoms.

* * *

 

  
Klaus is thoroughly bored and his boner dead by the time his until then missing spectral brother appears in his room.

“Your mate has the attention span of a goldfish” Ben greets him with, looking annoyed.

“You follow him?” Klaus asks. Without a care for modesty in front of Ben, the spirit had seen him in worse positions, he rolls off the bed and hunts for something to wear, scowling at the dress pants. No way was he putting those back on.

Ben nods, not caring for the casual nudity anymore. "Someone shot up the clothing store few blocks away, no one was murdered thankfully.. I mean, someone was almost murdered by Diego, but yeah no deaths. I expected a trip to 7/11. Ended up playing Robin in a discount daytime parody of Batman"

Klaus snorts and rolls his eyes at his mate's predictability, squinting as he digs through Diego's old wardrobe in search of something else to wear.

"Who did Di nearly murder?" Behind him Ben doesn't react when several items of clothes are flown right through him as his brother works his way through the room trying to find anything that fit him and wasn't the horrendous dress suit discarded on the floor. Like a despairing teen in a coming of age movie, Klaus flicks through garments with a sneer on his face, quietly judging the plain outfits Reginald permitted them in their late teens, and releases a groan when all he finds is a pair of shorts.

"One of the detectives on the scene" Ben answers, tilting his head to read the spines of the books on Diego's shelf.

"Thank fuck for my slender waist" Klaus notes, hoisting them on. "Huh, not Eudora?"

Ben cocks a brow. "Hm, don't think so. It was a dude. Said some stuff about getting over a patch"

The Omega lets out a curious sound, wondering who Ben meant, but also privately pleased at the implication that it was becoming known that Diego was no longer hung up on his ex. When Diego had told him he was seeing someone, Klaus had played like he didn't care and promised not to show up for any more heats, but in reality he'd been hurt. Spiralling off into a particularly dark period of time in his life hurt, one he wouldn't even confide in Ben the cause of, much to the Beta's frustration and worry.

Klaus turns to the door and swings it open, stretching as he does so, and pads down the hallway peering into each room as he goes. Diego's old shorts on him are baggy around the waist, so with one quick detour into his own room Klaus squeezes himself commando into his favourite lace up leathers that still lay forgotten when he'd discovered Allison's skirt, and it takes Klaus all of a split second to debate whether or not to steal one of Luther's shirts to wear as a dress: it's not the same, of course it isn't, as wearing one of Diego's in a romantic fashion, but Klaus cannot wait to see Luther's face and commit it to memory.

"He's going to hate that" Ben comments as Klaus struts confidently through the house, down towards the kitchen where he can hear Allison and Luther talking to Grace. Too far away to decipher precisely what they're saying, Klaus pays them no mind as he gives Ben an exaggerated spin with his fingers pinching the hem of Luther's shirt so it bellows out around him like a swinger's skirt. Ben laughs.

He laughs even harder when Luther's face flicks from curiosity, to a look reading as 'oh, it's just Klaus', to outrage.

"Is that my shirt?" Luther splutters, staring Klaus down as the slender Omega skips into the room and takes a seat opposite him.

Klaus leans on one hand. "Indeed, brother dear. It's roomy"

He shoots Allison a wink, enjoying how she looks more amused than annoyed. Every moment she stood more on his side than Luther's was one to be treasured.

"Klaus, dear, you know it's not nice to steal your brother's clothes" Grace tsks, preparing another plate of food for Klaus. She looks over her shoulder at him while cracking an egg open over the pan. "You always ask first!"

The Omega smiles, small and genuine. "Okay. Mom, can I borrow some of your clothes?"

Luther voices protests, but Grace speaks over him. "Oh of course honey, let me just finish this meal up and I'll go find you something. You'll look wonderful!"

"Thanks, mom"

"So where's Diego?" Allison asks after finishing a mouthful of bacon, stamping her foot on Luther's under the table. The Beta's mouth clamps shut.

Klaus shrugs and lies. "Dunno, why'd I know? We're not joined at the hip, Allie"

The 'unlike some people' goes unsaid, but heavily implied in the way Klaus glances between Allison and Luther, and he suppresses a giggle when the pair flush. In truth, he and Diego were just as codependent as his siblings across from him since their return to the academy, but in their defence they had a mating bond to explain it. Allison and Luther were just repressed by sexual tension, in Ben's words, not Klaus'.

"Don't talk to her like that" Luther snips.

"Like what?"

Grace remains blissfully ignorant of the rising tension as she lays Klaus' breakfast out in front of him. The Omega takes a moment to thank her, earning himself a caress to his cheek, and he watches her breeze out of the kitchen to head off and retrieve him some clothes.

"Disrespectfully"

Klaus rams an egg in his mouth, letting the yoke dribble down his chin, and gives Allison a pointed look. "Am eye-guh bing' disperspect foob?"

Allison simply raises her eyebrows at him and stuffs her last piece of bacon into her mouth, letting the grease run down to Klaus' delight and Luther's shock. Fuck, he loves his sister sometimes.

Before she's even swallowed Allison chugs the last of her orange juice. Luther looks at the pair of them like he doesn't know them, like strangers have suddenly taken their place, and Allison nearly chokes laughing when Klaus sticks his tongue out at his brother, chewed up egg slime on it.

"Mom!" Luther shouts instinctively. Then blushes and coughs. "I mean, stop that. Both of you. It's disgusting"

Taking pity on him, Klaus swallows his food and wipes his mouth on his wrist, while Allison plucks up a napkin to clean her own lips.

After a minute or so of silence, growing heavy with awkwardness now the messing with food is over, Klaus is nearly tempted to up and leave when he feels Allison tap his knee with her toe. She inclines her head to Luther.

"You'll be proud, Klaus. Luther asked me about secondary dynamics last night"

Genuinely surprised, Klaus' hands cover his heart. "Really, Lulu?"

Luther scrambles for words and Allison nods enthusiastically. "Yeah. It's crazy how much stuff he believed, a lot of it not even close to true. It was really, really nice. Of course, I can't answer everything, he had some questions about Omegas that I wasn't sure on. Maybe you could answer them?"

"Allison! No, I'm not asking him anything" Luther barks.

"Oh yeah sure!" Klaus offers at the same time.

Ben covers his face and Allison slaps Luther hard on the arm.

"Klaus. I... I didn't mean it like that, that came out wrong" Luther says softly, but the damage is done. Klaus' grin is wide but everyone can tell the bravado is gone, with a loud screech of his chair legs across the floor, Klaus stands up and waves his 'goodbye' palm at the pair of them, turning it at the end into a salute. His breakfast remains half eaten and rapidly cooling on the table, and he doesn't have the stomach to finish it anymore.

"Nah, it's cool bro. I wouldn't want to ask me anything either" He winks as he passes Luther. "Not like I, an Omega, would know shit about Omegas, eh?"

All three call after him, but Klaus ignores them all.

He's not sure if he's disappointed or glad not one of them follows him. Diego would have followed him. Diego ran head first into everything and scrambled to fix things with the same bullheaded determination. Not like Number One, Klaus thought with unexpected bitterness, who always thought he was above trying to make amends.

"Oh sweetie" Grace's voice makes him jump, catching him at the mid point of the stairs. In her arms is a pretty white blouse and a pink polka dot skirt, both folded perfectly. "Whatever's wrong?"

Klaus jogs up a few more steps to meet her, and kisses her cheek. As he does so he accepts the clothes she offers. "Nothing mom. I'm fine"

"Was Luther mean again? Oh I do wish you boys would get along" The android croons woefully, looking distraught. Klaus swallows a lump in his throat, unable to handle Grace's concern and affection after so long without it. "If you can't say anything nice..."

"Don't say anything at all" Klaus quotes back to her. "Thanks for the clothes, and really, everything's okay"

He bolts before Grace can say anymore about it. With his longer legs and Omega speed, Klaus bounds up the stairs, ignoring as he goes how much his heart aches and his head spins for a hit. In rehab Klaus had been surrounded by people who all wanted to support him in getting sober, all people he barely knew, and it burned him to think that those strangers all seemed to have more investment in Klaus' overall well being and happiness than the people he grew up with and called family.

Unable to stand being in Luther's shirt anymore, the joke soured now he remembered what an asshole the man in question was, Klaus doesn't bother going up to his room and instead beelines for the living room. Laying Grace's clothes on the couch respectfully, Klaus juxtaposes that by pulling off Luther's shirt and flinging it off into the room without even glancing at where it landed, privately hoping it landed in the muddy soil of a plant pot or by some miracle some dust mites Grace might have by chance missed.

"Klaus, you know he didn't mean it like that" Ben's voice appears, ever defending Luther.

Klaus glares at him. "Oh he did. Hey, maybe get over your boner for him for one minute and realise our dear captain is a total ass"

It's a low blow bringing up Ben's crush and he knows it, but Klaus refuses to regret it. He turns away from Ben's gaping, hurt expression and starts to peel off his leathers, skipping and wobbling on the spot as he fights and curses them. Klaus hadn't brought up Ben's affection for Luther in years, not since Allison's wedding was announced in the tabloids and, high on a few different drugs, Klaus had said maybe now Ben could slide in there. What he thought was a nice thing to say in his flying high daze actually came out unbearably cruel, a fact he realised when Ben reminded him he was dead and Luther would never be able to see him, not that Luther would ever return his feelings anyway: Luther was strictly into feminine bodies, whether Beta or Secondary.

His leather pants slap as he finally gets them off and kicks them aside, and unnoticed they land just to the right of Pogo, narrowly missing the ape. Seeing his former charge's state of undress, Pogo looks around the room modestly while waiting for Klaus to button up Grace's blouse and shimmy into the skirt, and clears his throat when after doing so, Klaus still doesn't notice Pogo there.

"Christ on a cracker!" Klaus shouts, hand slapping over his heart.

Pogo smiles tightly at him. "Master Klaus"

"Hey Pogo" Number Four breathes. He glances over at Ben with narrow eyes, which Ben answers with a cold shrug. Yeah, he deserved not being warned about Pogo after what he said, he'd give Ben that.

"I'm glad to have finally caught you" The ape opens with, and Klaus gives a curious hum. "Items from your father's office have gone missing. In particular, an ornate box with pearl inlay. The contents of that box are priceless, what did you do with them when you sold off the box?"

Four reels back, shocked to be taken back to his time as a child being scolded by Pogo. Although less harsh than anything Reginald brought out, it still had Klaus blinking back tears as a child: at the time he'd never handled being told off well, and to his dismay the Omega seems to have lost the carefully cultivated thick skin now. Luther's treatment, mom's kindness with the clothes and the high strung itch for a hit seemed to have left him emotional. He glances at Ben who looks down at the ground, avoiding his gaze.

"What makes you think I did anything with that box?" Klaus defends, but his voice shakes to his annoyance. He'd sold it off for cash to buy the very same drugs that had ended up crushed under Diego's boot, and then stolen away in Allison's purse for later disposal. Logically he knew he had no reason to get so agitated with Pogo, given he was guilty, but after the last twenty-four hours it feels... too much suddenly, to be cornered by his childhood caretaker like this.

Pogo shifts his posture, both hands clasped around his cane. "This is important. Should you bring back the contents then you will be absolved of any blame or consequence. Number Four, there is-"

"Well whoop-te-fucking-doo" Klaus snaps, his old name falling from the ape's lips the final straw. In his peripherals he sees Ben's head lift at break neck speed, and imagines his brother's eyes are wide with shock. He doesn't look, fixed instead on the satisfying aghast look on Pogo's face. "How lucky for me, not being blamed for something for once"

Ben spies the vase beside him titter on it's pedestal, minute and subtle, and his brows furrow over his widened eyes. Darting between the vase, Klaus and Pogo as an unwilling spectator.

Klaus storms past Pogo, skirts bellowing, and the ape's nostrils flare as he does so.

"Master Klaus, are you quite alright?" Pogo calls, blinking after him. All frustration with the young Human's antics had fallen away from Pogo, replaced with concern for his well being. It had been a very long time since he had seen such a strong reaction from Klaus, and that smell...

The Omega spins around to salute him. "Just fine, Pogo. Paka paka!"

* * *

 

_Entry 24. Observations pertaining to the mating bond between Number Two [ Diego ] and Number Four [ Klaus ]._   
_At this time I have noted no less than sixty occasions wherein my brothers initiate physical contact without seeming to realise this. In previous studies I found that a lack of intimacy is psychologically damaging for both members of a bond, and as such I plan to assess whether Reginald's rule on no touching between Alpha-Omega presenting siblings has had a lasting detrimental affect on Diego and Klaus, and in addition whether those years of forced estrangement contributed to their respective mental illnesses. As such I will be, in conjunction with the immeasurably more important task of preventing the apocalypse, undergoing additional research into the study of Mating Bond Isolation [ Retski . 1909 ] and attempt to locate any articles that relate. Perhaps, with some luck, I may find something that can help my brothers. Particularly if I am able to find anything that relates to the later life of the subjects studied in Mating Bond Isolation [ Retski . 1909 ]._

_It is my hope that after the prevention of the apocalypse I will be able to undergo a more in depth investigation into the mending of Diego and Klaus' damaged psyches; trusting it is at least in part due to their forced distance. As for my remaining siblings, I am as of now, unsure of how to undo what Reginald inflicted in them._

**You do care. You need to stop acting like you don't.**

Five stops writing, pursing his lips and glaring over at Dolores in the back of the van.

"Of course I care, but there isn't enough time to sit around holding their hands telling them how much I dearly missed their dysfunctional selves" He mutters, turning back to his work. He underlines a few key points.

**If there isn't the time, then why are you so focused on what Reginald did to your brothers, hm? You're 'wasting' a lot of time and effort into watching them than playing Earth's hero.**

He grits his teeth. She's got him there, not that he would ever admit to it. It never failed to frustrate Five how often Dolores was right about things. She was right that the calculations were off, and she was right that despite the limited time the world had, Five felt his mind become inexplicably distracted by his family's welfare time and time again, no matter how hard he tried to focus on the more pressing issue.

"What do you want me to say, dear?" He asks, sighing.

**I want you to admit all this has nothing to do with saving the world.**

"What are you talking about? Of course it's about saving the world. I want nothing more than to save it"

**No. You couldn't give a shit about the world.**

Her voice is silken and amused, catching his attention away from his book. Her face as usual was impassive, a stony faced control Five sought to replicate every day, but her eyes gave away a sparkle of teasing he loved so.

She continues.

**You only care that if the world ends, so do your family.**

The memories of finding those corpses burns in his mind. The harrowing, gut dropping moment of realisation he had as a child when he saw the tattoos on their wrists and put the pieces together. Those adult bodies were the grown up forms of his beloved siblings, with two missing he'd spend years wondering about until he found Vanya's book: and after that he still had no explanation as to where Vanya was, only more grief over Ben.

**Go see them. They're downstairs having breakfast right now, darling. Spend time with them, because you might not-**

"Might not what?" Five snaps. "Might fail? Might lose them all over again? Don't you think I know that? That is the very reason I am heading out today, so I can find something on this eye. It will take me one step closer to saving them"

**Don't snap at me, I'm only trying to help.**

Five deflates as fast as he angered. "I know, I'm sorry"

**Apology accepted... Now, what are you going to do today?**

"I am going to corner the doctor and find out what he's hiding"

**You think he's hiding something?**

"I know he is. If there's one thing the Commission taught me is recognising when someone is holding back information, I just need to give him a little persuasion" Five shuts his book and hides it away in the inner lining of his old blazer.

Dolores looks upset, but Five can't say whether or not it's because she hated his violence and what the Commission drove him to or because of the bag he was picking her up to put her in. He gives her an apologetic smile regardless.

"Don't worry, Dolores. We'll figure this all out and then I'll have plenty of time to make sure they know I care for them. I promise"

**You better.**

* * *

 

"Hey Luther" Klaus greets, throwing out a trash bag that definitely is not deliberately aimed at his elder brother's face. "What brings you?"

Luther has the good grace to wince at Klaus' faux sing song voice and for a moment Klaus wonders if he's come out to apologise.

"Family meeting"

Klaus and Ben give each other looks. Of course.

"Do you know where Diego is?" Luther continues and Klaus groans at the sky, head thrown back in exasperation.

"I meant what I said, Luther. Diego and I don't have some kind of GPS on each other, I can't magically sense where in the city he is" The Omega leans on the edge of the dumpster, levelling a cool look at his brother.

Luther huffs. "Allison said you could smell him"

"The only things I can smell right now is your lemony goodness, this delightful arrangement" He gestures to the waste he stands in. "And... huh, Five is out, I'm definitely picking up a waft of that old man smell around here"

"You can smell Five but you can't smell Diego?" One's brow furrows and Klaus has to admit it is quite adorable. If Luther never spoke, then he'd fully understand Ben's interest.

Klaus hoists himself over the edge of the dumpster, letting out a surprised 'oh' when Luther actually steps up to help him before he stumbles down onto his face. He pats down Grace's flowing skirt and smirks at the peculiar look Luther gives the outfit, far from the tattered, stolen clothes he'd expected Klaus to be wearing. "It means, beloved brother of mine, that Diego is too. Far. _Away_. Five on the other hand is..."

He sniffs the air, ignoring the snicker Ben gives, and points down the alley. "Around the corner there"

Luther nods in thanks and passes Klaus without another word, leaving Klaus to throw open his arms dramatically.

"Not even a thank you?" Klaus beseeches Ben, who shakes his head fondly. "Well, clearly dad's diary is gone. You know what I want? I want the rest of my breakfast"

"You want drugs" Ben deadpans.

Klaus gasps. "Yes! Yes, I do. Maybe I'll..."

He trails off, turning on the spot with pupils dilating, and his brain drowns out the sounds of Ben calling his name. Caught on a bellow of wind rolling down the alleyway, the mingling scents dissolved under an intense wave of floral aroma. Diego. It was faint, but there, and wherever Diego was he was finally close enough for Klaus to detect him which in the Omega's mind had to mean only one thing.

"Boo's back" Klaus preens. He gives Ben double finger guns as he walks backwards towards one of the many back doors of the Academy. "Be seeing you Ben, your's truly is about to sneak in a quickie before the meeting"

The Beta wrinkles his nose. "Oh my god"

"You know what? I'm going to wait in Reggie's office" Klaus cackles, a spring in his step when Ben repeats himself, shouting this time.

"Wait no, Klaus don't have sex on our father's..." The back door swings shut, cutting Ben off at the last moment. "... desk"

* * *

 

As he drives past, Diego sees Luther marching with determination down the street towards a van, but pretends not to have noticed his brother when the Beta tries to wave him down. Whatever Luther had to say Diego never wants to hear it, especially not in that precise moment with a pack of condoms sitting in the passenger seat beside him, since as funny as Luther's blushing face would be Diego had something to do.

Specifically, someone to do.

Painfully aware how late he is with his crime sleuthing detour, Diego only just remembers to pause and lock his car when he parks up near the academy. It's not as close as he would have liked but the space he occupied before had been stolen, frustratingly, and once again finds himself wishing his father had a private car park built somewhere, since the old space where their team car, once used to transport them quickly wherever they were needed, used to sit now housed Allison's rental.

He pushes through the front doors and ignores Allison when they run into each other, him entering and her leaving.

"Morning Diego, family meeting. Would you happen to know where Van..." Allison starts, trailing off when Diego runs straight past her. She watches him disappear at speed up the stairs and shakes her head. "Fine, who am I kidding? As if you'd know where Vanya is anyway"

At the sound of the front door closing, another door opens.

Diego puffs, leaning on the frame of the side door to their father's office. "Klaus"

The Omega in question was sat at Reginald's desk, fingers linked and resting on the desk top in a remarkable parody of their father, leveling a hard stare at him.

"Diego" Klaus replies, trying to sound prim. It comes out amused. "And what time do you call this?"

His Alpha pulls out a box from his pocket and flicks it his way, using his powers to make it land perfectly in front of Klaus. He then kicks the office door closed. "Sorry, got um... got held up"

"By a crime scene" Klaus quirks a brow, delighting at Diego's sheepish smile. "Gonna have to make it up to me"

"Oh?" Diego approaches, a swagger entering his walk. "In dad's old office?"

Four leans back in the chair, ankles lifting to rest one over the over on top of the desk, and points up at the portrait above. "But of course. Also, ever wonder, because I did, who the hell has a giant painting of themselves in their own space?"

Diego rounds the desk, pulling off a glove with his teeth, and lands a hand comfortably on the elegant curve of Klaus' ankle, and his thumb strokes a circle there. "Aside from asshole European kings? Someone with a big enough ego. Are those mom's clothes?"

The question earns him a smile. "Yeah, I'm lacking stuff to wear and while mom washes my stuff she let me wear her's"

"Suits you"

The hand on his ankle starts to slide up his leg, making Klaus shiver and part his legs, his head falling back as Diego leans down and his palm smoothes along the inside of Klaus' thigh. For Diego, the pleased hum Klaus let out when their lips met would never get old and it makes his heart leap thinking that, for the time being at least, he could kiss Klaus whenever he wanted. He hoped with dad finally gone and Klaus seemingly having made a break through with staying sober, that they might be able to start making things work between them.

They could get a place together with their inheritance, since Luther was definitely the only one of the family who wanted the academy, and they didn't even need to work if they didn't want to. Klaus used to talk about wanting cats. Diego would get him a house big enough for as many cats as his Omega desired.

Klaus chuckles when Diego starts purring.

"As adorable as this is, you've got some making up to do- Oh fuck" His words catch when Diego's hot hand reaches his cock and caresses it. His legs bow to give Diego more space and the Alpha marvels at the heady rise and fall of Klaus' chest as he starts to tug his Omega off.

He whines when Diego suddenly lets go, but it's drowned out when Diego spins the chair around to face him and drops to his knees between Klaus' legs. No sooner was his hand gone it was there again, tighter and bolder under the skirt, and Diego leans into Klaus' touch when the other reaches out to comb his nails over his scalp.

"We're gonna have to be careful" Diego muses, teething off his other glove and kneading it down Klaus' inner leg. He smiles at how his baby squirms from his touch. "This is a lovely skirt"

Klaus pants a laugh. "Yeah, not like Allison's dated rags"

Not that he's planning on returning the dress, nor that Grace would mind if it didn't, because the thought of seeing their mother wearing it again after he and Diego fucked in it was a horror story.

His thin hands grip like tight vices onto the armrests of the chair when Diego ducks down, skirts over his head, and licks up the underside of Klaus' cock, and Klaus lets out a loud, pitched cry when as he does this Diego pushes two fingers into him without easing in. It burns a little, just as Klaus liked, but it gets wetter as Diego speeds up without preamble into a ruthless pace. Fucking him hard with his fingers, Diego makes use of his mouth and takes Klaus down his throat, thanking his breathing powers and sets off a comparatively languid bobbing pace juxtaposing the speed of his hand.

His ears ring with the beautiful sounds Klaus makes, moans and sobs, and his body fully shivers when Klaus' hands shoot from the armrests to his shoulders, the only part of Diego he could reach without pulling up the pretty pink skirts. He hears something knock off Reginald's desk from Klaus' scrambling limbs. Diego draws back just enough to flick his tongue over the tip of Klaus' cock, then under his foreskin, and swallows Klaus down again, stretched lips twitching to grin at the wail his Omega gives.

"Shit, Diego. Oh fuck, oh fuck, fuck" Klaus gasps in a mantra, over and over, kicking up a notch when his punishing pace is joined by a third finger. His spine arches. "Oh my god, Di. Di, _please_ -"

It's all the warning Diego gets before Klaus comes, hot and fast, down his throat. He's surprised but manages not to choke, another blessing of his abilities, and takes care to carry on fingering Klaus through his orgasm. He slows his pace, moving back so he can look up and Klaus, and can't take his eyes off the sight he's met with.

Klaus breathless and stunning, rosy cheeked and eyes glossy with pleasure, and his lips red and wet from biting them. When he notices Diego's attention on him Klaus sighs and reaches out to stroke his cheek, enjoying how his Alpha nuzzles into his touch.

"You better fuck me now" He tells him, wiggling happily as Diego rises from his haunches. Diego notices unsettling taxidermy encased in a dome has gone rolling, and other items across his desk scattered, and puffs up proud of the affect he had over Klaus. He leans in to kiss Klaus, their wet lips sliding beautifully together.

Diego and Klaus burst a part when the door opens suddenly, and it's only thanks to Diego's ability to move objects after he's thrown them that Luther is saved from a knife straight to the face. Wide eyed and jaw slack, Luther stares at the knife vibrating in the door next to his head and his distraction gives his brothers enough time to right themselves.

"You could have hit me" He says, then looks at them both. Diego is dusky scarlet as he stalks towards Luther and behind him Klaus seems oddly flustered, but the Beta pays him no attention as he focuses on Number Two. "Family meeting, right now. I've got something important to show you"

Diego yanks the knife out of the door and Luther refrains from flinching instinctively.

"We'll be there in a minute" The Alpha seethes.

Luther shook his head, narrowing his eyes at Klaus who skips up behind Diego and rests his chin on the man's shoulder. "No, right now. Whatever you were doing it can wait. Neither of you should be in here anyway"

Klaus kisses Diego's bonding mark and thanks whatever deity responsible for his limited luck that Luther was either clueless, unable to hear as well as secondary sexes, or both.

"Come on, Di. Let's see what our dear captain wants" He slaps Diego's ass as he winds around the two glaring men. Then he pauses to slap Luther's too, twice as hard, just to hear him squeak indignantly and see a smirk replace the thunderous look on Diego's face.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Paka paka means bye bye in Russian! Which is really cute, so I had to put it in.
> 
> Also yay for Plot in this chapter, I'm finally getting to that bit


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone for their lovely comments!! I LOVE YOU

>   
>  _**Date:** November 12th 2005. _  
>  _**Subject/s:** Number Two, Number Four_  
>  _**Title:** Continuation of Behavioural Studies._
> 
> _Dr. Pogo's report has solidified what I already suspected concerning subjects Number Two and Number Four: their codependency has had a detrimental affect on the cohesion of the class as a whole. Encouraging teamwork in their early years appears to have had little impact on Number Two's dynamics with Number One, Number Three and Number Five, yet has had a significant affect on his dynamics with Number Six and, most pressingly, Number Four._
> 
> _Number Four in addition displays a mutual reluctance to part with Number Two, a trait not found in his dynamics with his other siblings including Number Six. Number Six appears to be a third party in what Grace informs me is their "Even Numbers Club"._
> 
> _While using this codependency in the past to control their behaviours, using one another as motivation for the misdemeanours of the other, it has now become an unforeseen hindrance._
> 
> _Today during 08:00 hours one-to-one combat training; Number Two, Number Three, Number Four and Number Seven all simultaneously presented their Secondary Sexes. I have taken further notes under the Synchronisation Phenomenon files concerning this development. This change in the children would not be of concern nor notable relevance had Number Two and Number Four not been sparring at the time of full presentation. I am reliably informed from both Dr. Pogo's report, Number One and Number Six's recounts, and the footage captured of the event, that Number Two has bitten Number Four._
> 
> _Aforementioned footage confirms that as I write this the pair are engaging in the First Mating. Although I had, perhaps foolishly, theorised that the 43 would be infertile Betas owing to their unusual chromosome composition, I prepared for this possibility in the purchasing of contraception. Once this nauseating display has finished and Grace confirms to me the passing of Number Four's 'Heat' they shall be separated and Number Four given suitable prescriptions to prevent possible pregnancy. I may consider in the far future allowing another copulation to allow for study into their possible infertility and the expansion of the Umbrella Academy in any offspring the pair produce [ Additional Note, Number Three and Number Seven. Potential organised pairing. Will NOT allow for Bonding if this does occur. ]_
> 
> _Number One and Number Six have not presented Secondary Sexes. I deduce from the synchronicity of their classmates presentations that they are Betas, and therefore have no Secondary Sex to present. I will however still study the pair as there is still the unlikely chance they will present in the coming years._

* * *

  
The moment her brothers enter the room Vanya can smell sex, and a blush rises over her cheeks. Her heat is due soon, she can feel it, and there's a quality of Klaus' scent mixed so luxuriously with Diego's, a strong bonded pair, that makes her Omega scenes croon with need. She doesn't find the masculine form attractive but regardless she feels herself drawn to the pheromones Diego is projecting: protective, warm, all encompassing strength and security...

"You okay?" Allison asks her, snapping Vanya from her lull. Her eyes tear away from Diego, whom glared back at her absentminded staring, and nods at Allison.

"Yeah. I'm fine" She lies.

Diego crowds near Klaus, and the Omega puts his hand on Diego's knee when they come to sit on the couch beside Vanya. Under his breath Diego mutters about Vanya's staring, insulting in his tone, and Klaus chuckles.

Vanya's cheeks burn with humiliation. Some part of her thought maybe Klaus, a fellow Omega, might support her just a little bit and understand that so close to her Heat she couldn't help but be drawn in by Alphas: especially ones like Diego projecting pheromones of safety and sex. But then he had always been bonded, Klaus didn't know the feeling of longing that ached all the way down to her bones and made her crave attention from any nearby Alpha, regardless of attraction, just to make the crushing insecurity and loneliness before a Heat ease away. Klaus, Vanya bitterly thought, had Diego with him since day one of presenting.

He was so, so lucky.

"You look nice" She tells Klaus quietly, as if keeping her voice as low as possible might disguise the jealousy her Omega instincts are poisoning her with.

Klaus smiles brightly at her and smooths out the polka dot skirt daintily. "Thanks. It's not my usual style but you know me, I can make anything work"

He gives her a wink and a nudge, and Vanya fully expects that to be the end of their interaction. Luther wheels in a TV set, and while he's clumsily trying to set it up with Allison's help, Klaus leans into Vanya's space and out of Diego's touch in his hair.

"You seem a bit" He waves his hand. "High strung?"

She doesn't know what to say to that. Vanya can't decipher his expression nor his tone, forever on guard and unsure whether or not he's mocking her. She knows she's tense both from her medication and the Heat she knows is now days away.

Diego snorts. "It's Vanya, Klaus. She's always got a stick up her ass"

Her Omega sibling betrays her by laughing, a hand landing on Vanya's shoulder as if she found this amusing too. Like it was just a funny quip that didn't tear into her heart and flay it to pieces.

"Alright" Luther announces, catching their attention. Vanya feels relief wash through her when Diego's harsh gaze turns on Number One. "Everyone watch closely"

The Beta presses play, and Vanya squints to see what he means. Her stomach lurches when she realises this is a video of their father dying. Unlike her siblings she's never seen a life be taken, she's never taken one like they have on their missions, everyone, even righteous Luther, had killed someone. Anyone deemed the enemy on their missions had their lives ripped from them by a group of children raised to believe doing so was okay so long as their daddy called the victims the bad guys.

Vanya doesn't want to watch anyone die, let alone the father she has a profoundly complicated relationship with. Watching him struggle for breath and collapse as Grace dreamily walks away makes her feel nauseous, but one look around at the indifferent expressions on her family's faces has her trying valiantly to steel her nerves.

How could they watch their father die with so much... Boredom. Even Luther, who adored their father, studied the tape with a look better suited for solving a puzzle than watching a parent die slowly and painfully. Vanya suddenly resents Reginald even more for what he made her siblings. No one should be so desensitised to death.

Silence follows the video, and Luther replays it one more time as if seeing their father die once wasn't enough. She clears her throat. "I mean, do you really think Mom would hurt Dad?"

"You haven't been home in a long time, Vanya. Maybe you don't know Grace anymore" Luther says with an eye roll. It makes her feel small.

"If he was poisoned, it would have shown in the coroner's report" She tries to contradict. Grace wasn't a killer, it wasn't in her programming like it was in her siblings'. The thought of the loving android doing anything of the sort, even against Reginald, made Vanya want to run away and hide.

Luther snaps. "Well, I don't need a report to tell me what I can see with my own eyes"

Vanya squirms, the Omega within her cowed by his tone and to her surprise a bubble of rage sparks deep within her. A type of exhausted anger she's never felt before.

"Maybe all that low gravity in space messed with your vision. Look closer. Dad has his monocle. Mom stands up. Monocle's gone" Diego leans forward to rewind the tape, and lets it play again as their mother moves on the screen.

Seven watches Diego and Klaus instead of the screen. A hideous, angry ache in her chest hating the way Klaus leans on Diego to look closer, and how Diego lets him.

Klaus grins. "Oh, yeah! She wasn't poisoning him. She was taking it"

"To clean it" Diego nods, eyes on Klaus for a moment of pure pride. The Alpha looks at his Omega like he set the stars in the night sky and lit them up just for him.

Vanya feels sick from the mixed feelings of longing and bitterness, each fighting for dominance in her head. She needs to leave... She needs...

A hand lands on her shoulder, squeezing gently, and Vanya feels herself being pulled from a fog in her mind. Wordlessly she takes out her pills and swallows one down, too used to dry pills, and doesn't look up until the pot is back in her pocket. When she does look up at the owner of the hand, she sees Allison in all her glory standing behind her, eyes set on their brothers, and Vanya can't place why her sister was touching her. It's curious, Vanya decides, seeing Alpha instincts in action without the person's awareness.

"I threw it away" Diego admits, and Vanya has to rush to catch up with what she missed in her haze.

To her left she sees Klaus turn his head to thin air beside him, a quiet 'oh!' sound drawing from his lips, like he's realising something.

Luther looks furious. "You what?"

"Look, I knew that if you found it on Mom, you'd lose your shit, just like you're doing right now" The Alpha says, hands up in a ghost of a placating manner. It might have worked, if only most of the room couldn't smell the aggressive pheromones he was smoking the air with.

Number One takes a step towards Diego, anger written over his face, and Vanya braces herself for a fight. The hand on her shoulder tightens as Allison too tenses.

"Diego, you son of a bitch-"

Luther's reaching hand, set to grip Diego's shirt perhaps, is caught by a thinner hand and Vanya jumps at the ripping, tearing sound Klaus makes as the Omega darts between One and Two. Caught off guard Luther cries out and yanks his arm away, accidentally pulling Klaus with him, causing the Omega to stumble to his knees.

Vanya covers her ears over the sound of growls in the room. The way the sounds pop and crackle, rumble and bleed into the air. Filling up her brain. One growl. Two growls. Intertwining and dancing around each other. She can almost see how the decibels pike and weave through the air like silken strips of white.

"Woah, woah, woah calm down" Allison commands, taking steps to stand in front of Vanya with a hand out between Diego, Klaus and Luther. "Hey! No, sit down. Klaus, calm down. Diego, back off"

Luther opens his mouth to speak, and the Alpha holds up a finger to silence him.

"No! Luther, I'm telling you to sit down" She repeats, layering her tone with authority. Allison's strong gaze turns to Diego, who looks down in submission and takes a seat back on the couch. With only one touch to Klaus' hand, Diego has his Omega settled beside him too.

Even after years a part, Allison is still the Dominant Alpha. Diego, for all his brooding and knives, was always too soft and submissive to take that role in the Secondary order. Too gentle. Too unsure of himself to command that kind of aura.

It does things to Vanya that Allison can. It prickles under her skin and makes her heart leap to see Allison bask in her own Domination, the situation lowering into a bristle of barely contained aggravation rather than outright warfare.

"Look, I know Dad wasn't exactly an open book. But I do remember one thing he said. Mom was, well, designed to be a caretaker, but also as a protector" Allison tells them all.

"What does that mean?" Someone asks, Vanya doesn't register who as she catches on to what Allison means.

"She was programmed to intervene if someone's life was in jeopardy" It's worth speaking up, Vanya finds, when Allison turns a grateful smile on her.

"Well, if her hardware is degrading, then" Luther looks about the room. "We need to turn her off"

Klaus shouts out, holding Diego back when the Alpha is the one to lunge this time. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait!"

"She's not just a vacuum cleaner you can throw in a closet. She feels things, I've seen it!" Two shouts, barely thrashing in Klaus' hold in a subconscious action not to harm him accidentally.

"She just stood there and watched our father die" Luther beseeches, taking a surprisingly calm stance and holding a hand out to soothe Diego. It seems even though their brother was emotionally clueless most of the time, their Number One did understand how much their android mother meant to Diego in particular.

Klaus scoffs. "So? Bit of fuzzy hard wear, easily fixed. You know what, how 'bout a vote yeah? Big guy, you love those"

He turns in synchronisation with Diego to Allison for her's, but she shakes her head at them. "I'm with Luther"

"Surprise, surprise" Diego spits snidely as Klaus rolls his eyes and turns to Vanya instead, and waits patiently while she stumbles. Whatever she was about to say is rolled over by Diego. "She shouldn't get a vote"

Vanya flushes. "I was gonna say that I agree with you"

Her Alpha brother looks to his mate, who fixes him with a smugly proud look, and nods his head once to concede. "Okay. She should get a vote"

"Nope, actually, no point in asking you, Klaus" Luther says, interrupting his first thought to ask just that. "You just do what your mate tells you"

This time Vanya doesn't feel bad for Diego and Klaus, who's eye brows rise as they each take in deep breaths to shout at Luther, still stinging from their prior shut downs. Instead she steps back as they argue with Luther, only seeming to prove One's point to the Beta and she can't help but think this is what he intended because he looks too happy about their distress.

She catches Allison's eye as the Alpha turns away pinching the bridge of her nose. She shakes her head at her, and Vanya can't help a small buzz of happiness at being there.

"Oh, you all seem upset" A voice cracks through the room, cutting Klaus off mid rant about something to do with a van that not even Diego seems to get behind out of confusion over where it came from. Standing by the doorway is the topic of debate, their mother, an expression of concern over her face. "I'll make cookies"

"Wait, mom, how long have you been listening?" Klaus starts towards her when she abruptly turns away, her movements crisp and robotic. Too sharp for an organic being.

Luther relaxes like his point is somehow proven and Diego snarls, not liking the look on his face. He makes it one step towards Luther when Allison is between them, echoing back to the day before, and slams her hand against Diego's chest harder this time, displaying more of a show of dominance than before.

"Leave it. Now" She growls, digging her nails into his chest through his sweater. He avoids her glare but does drop the subject, and Vanya flinches when he kicks one of their father's decorations over on his path storming out as if to make sure Allison knows he's leaving not because she ordered it as Dominant but because he wanted to.

She flinches again, cursing her pre-Heat Omega nerves, when Klaus hisses in Luther's smug face when he pads after his Alpha. Vanya tries to catch Allison's eye again, like before, but feels her stomach drop when her sister only has eyes for Luther and Vanya doubts either of them even noticed her leaving.

* * *

 

Klaus winces at the roar Diego gives out, sweeping his arms over their father's desk and throwing everything on it onto the floor. There's a hole dented into the wall behind the door from where Diego kicked it open, one that Klaus notes but doesn't care for as he closes and locks the office door behind him, taking a hint from last time.

"Di" He calls softly, pulling faces as the Alpha moves around the room breaking things. Normally he would encourage the destruction of Reginald's belongings but not when the pheromones rolling off Diego rung alarm bells in his mind. They were thick, heavy and nauseating in their intensity, spiked with something poisonous. A scent he hasn't detected in years, not since Diego was kicked from the police academy. "Di, calm down, Di you're Hazing. Stop"

 _I'm too sober for this_ , Klaus thinks, then swats the intrusive thought aside.

Pacing as he is, Klaus can't get an angle on Diego's bite mark and the first few attempts to stop him moving fail, so Four then opts for yanking a lamp out of Diego's hands from where the other man was set to throw it and uses the force of the pull to have the Alpha stumbling into his embrace. A sense of dejavu washes over him as he thinks he had to do something similar the day before, only terribly and with the help of Ben, who's thankfully absent now.

"Calm down, hey?" Klaus purrs, hands through Diego's hair and breath over the mark. The lamp gets tossed carelessly aside but not hard enough to smash. "Not gonna Haze over Luther are you? We both know he's not worth that"

He's never been fond of violence but if Luther worked Diego up this badly again and threatened their mother, then Klaus might be inclined to some passive aggression or a bed filled with sand. It says much that Diego was more worked up over the possibility of their mother's death than the implication that one of them might have killed Reginald.

"He's a dumb hypocrite, you know?" Klaus continues, figuring out decades ago that Diego liked to listen to him ramble when he was upset. "Yesterday was all 'oh one of you murdered dad, boo!' now it's 'let's all kill mom'"

His nose flares, checking Diego's scent, and he smiles as his aura mutes down. Diego's hands come to rest on his hips, returning the hug at last, and Klaus sighs in relief and contentment, enjoying the wave of sweetness winning over the sour scent of Haze on Diego's skin.

"Klaus..."

"I know" He hums, heart breaking at the broken whine in Diego's voice. "I know. It'll be fine. Luther's not going anywhere near mom"

For Diego's benefit he doesn't address the wetness against his neck, felt when Diego nuzzles in close and drops his forehead to the juncture of Klaus' shoulder. Instead he leads them around in slow circles, swaying almost like a slow dance, and for his own amusement flips their father's portrait off when a turn has him facing the old man.

He kisses Diego's bonding mark, and Two shudders.

For a little while they stay like that, enjoying the other's company and the vindication of doing so under the dead eyed gaze of the portrait above. Wherever their father was in the afterlife he was too far away to do a thing about their closeness, he wasn't around to say or do anything to enforce his no touching rule but a wraith of him was above them to sit and watch. It felt viciously good. They're especially glad he isn't around anymore, knowing if he was that there would not have even been a debate about Grace, that she would have been shut down the second Reginald became aware of her glitches.

Klaus leans into Diego's soft, thankful kiss, an idea coming to him.

"You know what would piss 'em both off?" Meaning Reginald and Luther. Diego makes a curious sound. "Carrying on where we left off. Let's fuck on dad's desk, I left the condoms in his decorative ashtray"

Klaus grins wildly, triumphantly, when Diego guffaws in surprise.

* * *

  
__**October 1st 2007.**  
  


Confused is the first thing Diego feels when Grace's hand shakes him gently awake, because although it's not unheard of for her to wake him like this, she hasn't since he was a little kid and the clock tells him it's just past the eleven o'clock mark. Even though it had been their birthday and they had just become legal adults, Reginald still had the Academy follow their usual strict routines and sent them to bed by nine.

He blinks at her. "M-mom?"

Through the darkness he sees her smile lovingly at him and lift a finger to brush it over his lips.

"Hush, my darling" She whispers. "Get dressed quickly, I have a surprise for you"

When she stands Diego notices she has a satchel in her hand and on his bed she has laid him out some clothes, somehow without him having jerked awake from the sound of her moving around, and stares up at her trying to process what was happening.

She nods her head to the clothes, pausing by the door. "Quickly now. Meet me by the east wing back exit in five minutes, chop chop"

Then she's gone, deathly silent as she walks as only an android could be, and Diego barely waits a heartbeat before he's throwing his covers aside to dress as fast as his body will allow him to move without making enough sound to wake anyone. He's eager and skilled enough that he finds himself dressed and ready, waiting by the mentioned exit, before Grace arrives, and he fidgets while he waits, worried he's going to be caught.

He doesn't know what Grace is doing or what she meant, and he's none the wiser when his mother does finally arrive, his satchel and another in one hand, with Klaus in tow. Klaus, to his relief, looks just as bemused as him.

It's electric though, being so close to Klaus, when Grace leads the other young man up to Diego and doesn't automatically remind them in a sweet voice to remember their proximity.

"Mom, what's going on?" Diego asks, proud of himself for not stuttering. He jumps when Klaus darts forward to take his hand, unused to the sensation of his mate's skin on his, and Klaus blushes under Diego's alarmed stare. Once again their chaperone doesn't tell them to move a part, instead she smiles lovingly at their connected hands, giving Diego confidence to link their fingers. "Klaus?"

Klaus yawns and shakes his head. They wait as Grace threads their satchels over their heads for them.

"Now my darlings" She says, stepping around them to open the door. For a wild, almost hysterical moment Diego wonders if she's going to tell them to run away, but their bags are too light and he knows their mother would never let them leave without more supplies weighing them down. "Run along, have some fun, and make sure you're back here by three am sharp so I can let you back in"

They gape at her.

"Mom?" Klaus whispers.

"We don't... we don't understand" Diego exchanges a look with Klaus. "What's going on? We're not allowed out at night, we're not allowed anywhere together... a-a-alone"

He feels his mate, his best friend, squeeze his hand as if frightened this is all a cruel test by Reginald.

Sadness passes her beautiful features. "I know but..."

They wait for her to finish, but she never does, instead she leans forward to kiss them each on their foreheads and as gentle as she can forces them out the back door.

"Have fun, and be back by three am on the dot" She reminds them, and then shuts the door in the faces. For an embarrassing length of time the two boys stand on the doorstep staring at her blurry face through the mottled glass panes, only snapping into action when she waves and turns away.

They run off, unwilling to look a gift horse in the mouth, and don't stop running until they reach the bus stop gasping for breath. Diego digs in his bag and finds a spare sweater along with money tucked in a black leather wallet with a D stitched in the corner, and when Klaus does the same with his he finds an envelope and one of his favourite winter cardigans in case he too got too cold in what Grace had laid out for him.

Inside the envelope, they find a note reading 'Happy Birthday, my darlings' and two matching multicoloured, string woven bracelets.

* * *

  
**_Present day._ **

Diego regrets leaving Klaus in their shared bath, but unlike his mate he hated wallowing for too long in bodies of water, another gift from Reginald. He had parted with a kiss to Klaus' mouth and a hand through the Omega's hair, curling prettily from the water, to head off back to his room where he'd dry off without Klaus distracting him into another round.

Not that he didn't want to have sex again, it would never get old being able to do that with Klaus without there needing to be a Heat going on as an excuse, he just really wanted to check on their mother. He didn't trust that Luther would respect the lack of a unanimous vote, no matter what Five might have decided once he reappeared again Luther lost and Diego knew his brother hated to lose. They both did with the same intensity, it was why they clashed so strongly compared to their other siblings.

He did suspect it was also some inferiority thing over not being an Alpha, which initially didn't make any sense, but Diego figures there's only so many times you could sit through interviewers assuming you're a big strong Alpha only to be offensively shocked you're 'only a Beta' without starting to develop a complex.

Diego is sure Luther is glad though. As much as the world respected Alphas, it was based off of fear, prejudice and harmful stereotypes that dumbed them down into ruthless beasts who assaulted feeble, fragile Omegas and mellow, reasonable Betas, using violence as a way to stay on top. Ridiculous, since Alphas hadn't been the leading authority since the middle ages, when the Beta population suddenly rocketed and began to outnumber their Secondary counterparts, along with the spread of Christianity that favoured Betas, the supposed orientation of Jesus Christ.

To put it simply, Diego had everything working against him. Being one of the freak of natures known as The 43, being adopted by Reginald who stamped a number on him instead of a name, finding out harshly when he was thirteen how people with his skin tone were seen, and then presenting as an Alpha and immediately bonding with his 'brother', a damning taboo in any society. What made it worse was that the academy's mandatory psych eval had diagnosed him with PTSD and DBS, Dysfunctional Bond Syndrome. Apparently there was a word for the negative effects of Reginald's forced isolation between Diego and Klaus for so long. Diego almost hadn't made it past those early stages on the grounds that his case was the most severe of DBS she'd encountered.

In the end PTSD, DBS, and a terminal case of asshole, as Eudora called it, got him kicked out of his escape plan and option for building a stable life to rehabilitate Klaus into. All his dreams of having that white picket fence life, of marrying Klaus, since after Eudora broke things off there was no one who compared, and having their own real family together, was shredded to pieces and Diego hadn't been able to hold down another job since, let alone find something that might stimulate his need for justice and to fight and balance it with paying bills.

Diego sighs and closes his bedroom door behind him, tossing his pile of clothes onto his childhood bed and dropping the boots on the floor.

"Shit" He swears into the room, just because it half way makes him feel better. He swears a couple more times as he efficiently dries himself off and pulls on the layers of clothing. His dress suit is still on the floor and it looks like Klaus had been rummaging again, but Diego pays the disarray no attention as he clips up his harness.

All Klaus' work getting Diego to calm down and he was working himself back into what the Omega liked to call a sulk.

Not caring to find another towel for his hair, Diego drags the same one over his head a few times to dry out the short strands, and casts it along with his dusty dress suit into the wash basket in the ghost of a former habit. He stares at the basket for a second or two, then smiles to himself and chuckles.

One day back and he was already reverting to old routines.

He's just finished tying the last lace of his boots when he hears... something. Footsteps? Unfamiliar footsteps. Not Luther's thuds, Allison's clacking of heels, or Klaus' gentle beating of bare feet, not even Vanya's grating habit of dragging her feet. Someone else.

Diego pokes his head out of his room, looking down each end of the hall, before sniffing the air. The smell of Klaus is strongest, but he can detect a whiff of Luther's lemon and Allison's potent lavender hinting they had walked by not long ago, so as he steps out to find Grace he puts the thought to the back of his mind, putting the sound down as paranoia.

He makes it two steps when he spies a figure in his peripherals, and turns just in time to see the freakish mask before the gun starts to go off. With everything going to shit, Diego barely has time to hope that, since he's not in the fray with them, Klaus is keeping away from the fight, and to notice that neither of their masked attackers have any scent at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one was shorter than the last, that's just now my terrible chapter pacing made it pffff
> 
> Also Klaus seems mean to Vanya in this, but I promise that's just from her perspective and for the sake of THE DRAMA and PLOT
> 
> and yeah... Reginald was gross enough to film his sons mating... *shudders*


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again thank you to everyone who left kudos and wonderful comments, you all keep me motivated and going with this story. I love you!!! Thank you to everyone who leaves messages on my Tumblr too, I squeal in public reading them. IN PUBLIC!!

>   
>  _When he walks through the door to the gym, exhausted from a patrol and longing for bed, Diego nearly chokes on the potent scent of spice and smoke and lust thickening the air. It goes up his nose, through his already addled mind and straight to his cock, that fills as he stumbles across the room to follow the call of his mate._
> 
> _Klaus is here. Klaus is here. Klaus is here. His heart croons, thumping harder than when he had been fighting three adversaries at once a few hours before. He can't smell anything else, none of the stale stenches of the Alphas and Betas who used the gym during the day time, underneath the potent pulsating aura Klaus gives off from the basement boiler room. It gets stronger and stronger the closer Diego gets._
> 
> _He slams open the door and only just catches Klaus in time when he finds himself with arms full of Omega in Heat._
> 
> _Klaus has never been this heavy scented before, not in all the time Diego has known him, and it plummets Diego straight into a rut. He's dizzy with it._
> 
> _"Diego" His Omega whines, pained from the intensity of his Heat, legs around Diego's waist and mouth licking at his neck. The Heat is early, Diego would notice afterwards, by a few days, and that leaves the both of them unprepared and it's so much stronger that it sets their skin on fire like they've never felt before. The only thing Diego remembers with much clarity that night is kicking the door shut to his boiler room apartment at the start, and coming back hours later to a rumbled, sex soaked yet empty bed._
> 
> _And no note._

* * *

 

Seeing the blood down Vanya's face shatters past the wall of composure he'd maintained through the fight. She, unlike the rest of them, was never taught by their father to defend herself, and as angry as Diego was with her his pledge to never forgive her for the book did not extend to wishing harm on her.

"What are you still doing here?" He roars, too angry to care about her flinch, nor the nagging instinct not to yell at a frightened Omega. He interrupts any attempts she makes to excuse how dumb she was for trying to get involved. "You could have been killed, or gotten anyone of us killed!"

Diego didn't want to lose anyone else, not after Ben.

He turns and drags his fingers through his hair, when he looks back Allison is comforting Vanya and the Alpha sees red again. "She" He jabs a finger at Vanya. "Is a liability"

It stings to hear him say it, so Vanya looks away from his furious gaze to Allison. She hopes to find her sister ready to defend her again like she had times before this, but instead Allison is looking down their joined hands. She pulls her hands from Allison's grip.

"What he means is this kind of stuff is dangerous, and you're not-"

"Like you" Vanya finishes for her. For a moment she looks around for Klaus, to see if he agrees with any of this, but he's nowhere to be seen, likely off to make sure Luther was okay. Lacking a Head Omegan in their lives no one could deny that Klaus had grown into that figure and Vanya feels bitter knowing that Luther's emotional needs trumped her own in Klaus' mind. Like Allison, Klaus was just another special kid who saw her as a bane on their family.

Allison shakes her head, reaching out as Vanya gets up to run out. "No, wait Vanya that's not what I said!"

Diego waves a hand, covering his nose to shield from the crippling scent of distressed Omega that fills it when Vanya passes him. If she wasn't in the house then she was safe, in his books. "Let her go, it's for the best"

Three flinches when the door slams shut in Vanya's wake, but makes no more attempts to stop her sister leaving. Allison couldn't bare to let her sister leave when the Omega's scents screamed that she was in need, but Diego was right, it was for the best that Vanya was as far from danger as possible. The last thing any of them needed was her getting hurt because they couldn't protect her well enough.

Allison takes a deep breath, scenting the echoes of Luther's scent in the entrance hall, the clear path Vanya took leaving, and Diego beside her. She squints at him. "Hey, are you okay?"

Diego groans, trying to swat away her prying hands. "Yeah fine. I just... I hit my head. Those masks they're wearing are more like helmets"

Call it tension finally breaking, but Allison titters. "You headbutt one of them? Oh, Di, told you one day that would backfire"

"Yeah, yeah" The other Alpha grumbles, even though his lips twitch. He takes a deep inhale through his nose, smelling over all the perfumes of his family Klaus' scent in the house, and pats Allison on the shoulder. "Look, you go check on him, I'm gonna check on Klaus. Smells like he kept his ass upstairs and out of the cross fire, at least one Omega in this family has some sense"

Allison sighs. "Small virtues"

They both know Klaus was just as formidable in a fight as they were, known for his speed and stamina, but it had also been a long time since they fought together and everyone had seen how thin Klaus had become. His body wasn't taut and muscled like a gymnast or runner anymore, more like someone a few pounds off being skeletal. The skills would still be there, in his muscle memory and mind, but the body wasn't up to par anymore.

The Rumour checks Diego's head one more time, just to make sure there's nothing more to it, and then gives him a smile before they part ways. She ran to where they had seen Luther disappear to, while Diego jogged up the main stairs, following the scent of his mate.

It doesn't take her long to find Luther hiding out in the back cloakroom pulling on another of his oversized coats, not when the Beta smells so strongly of shame and other vulnerable emotions that make her shiver to think of coming from anyone she loved, and when he notices her there he looks ashamed.

"Luther-" She starts, cutting off abruptly when she hears a yell. Luther's wide eyes meet hers. "Shit, that's Diego"

They break out into a run together, Allison one step ahead, and tear back through the house. Perhaps the attackers had come back for another round? No, the closer they get the clearer they can hear Diego's voice, and he's calling out his mate's name. Oh god, please let Klaus be okay, Allison couldn't stand the thought that those freaks in their masks had gotten a hit on Number Four.

Luther grabs her by the lack of her shirt, saving her when she slips on some glass from the chandelier in the lobby, and they find themselves met with Diego practically diving down the steps towards them.

He looks so wild eyed and terrified, Allison's heart drops. "Have either of you seen Klaus?"

Behind her, Luther's hand tightens on her shirt instinctively. His voice croaks as he speaks. "No... No, not since the fight about mom"

Their Beta sounds so small, smaller than a man his size could ever possibly sound.

Hands shaking, Allison reaches out to Diego. "Why, Diego why? Is Klaus not- Hey, Diego wait!"

She scrambles to reach him before he darts out the front door, but he's long gone out in the storm outside by the time Luther remembers to let her go and the rain pelting down hard masks her brother's scent instantly, washing all traces of it down into the gutters of the street. Allison turns to meet Luther's shocked gaze.

"No" She denies.

Luther shakes his head.

"No" Allison repeats, an edge of hysteria entering her voice.

"No, no" One joins her as they close the front door and spill back out into the house. He watches her sniff the air, her mantra continuous, and follows as she takes a seemingly random path through the second level of their home to trace Klaus' trail as no doubt Diego had before her.

She passes the bathroom, then down the corridor, and disappears into Klaus' room.

"Luther" Allison cries. When no answer comes, Allison stumbles back out into the hallway. "Luther! Luther he's not her-"

The Alpha cuts off when she sees Luther crouched at the other end of the hallway, large coat tails fanned out over the floor, and for a second of her racing heart she's too scared to approach in case his hulking form hides a limp, skinnier one.

"Allison, come... come look at this" Luther says, beckoning her. Her heels click on the floor as she steps closer slowly and he hears her breathing hitch as she looks over his shoulder.

In front of him, scarred across the stone ground, starting some distance ahead of him towards the furthermost open window and continuing on behind him between his crouched legs, was a deep crack in the ground.

"What the hell?" Allison whispers as Luther reaches out to roll the tips of his fingers over the jagged edge. Just ahead of them, right under the window, is what appears to be the source of the crack, a crater splintering out like an impact had hit to from above: too large to be a bullet, but too deep to be caused by anything less than a wrecking ball. The Alpha leans down to touch it too and stops short when the scent of something catches her attention.

Allison's head snaps to the side, following her nose, and Luther waits patiently as she lowers to her knees beside the dent in the hard ground under the window.

She touches the centre with one finger and when her finger tip comes away red, she curses at the smell of it.

"Luther" She whispers, meeting his confused eyes with frightened ones of her own. "Luther, this is Klaus' blood"

* * *

 

The first time Klaus comes around, he's in what he assumes is a trunk, as contrary to what some might believe he's never found himself in one before, and he has a long time sitting in darkness and the potent stench of car fuel all over his bare skin before someone comes. The trunk lid opens to present him two terrifying masked strangers. Naturally, he screams.

One of them must have knocked him out because the next time he's roused he's tied to a chair with his towel about him for some mockery of modesty. It's from there that Klaus experiences one of the worst nights of his life. It said much about his life that it didn't count as the single worst night, but even with a floresant orange liquid injected into his arm- whatever drug it is, Klaus has never had it before and he feels no high from it- his nails pulled, chest sliced and other unpleasant things inflicted on his body it still wasn't as bad as being trapped in the crypts with the dead: he could drown out torture, disappear in his mind like his father had trained him and his siblings to do when placed under such extremes, but nothing ever drowned out the screams of the dead in that place.

What he gains while being tortured, for hours the clock on the wall tells him and the night turning to day outside the drawn curtains, is that the strangers were after his littlest brother, the one who claimed to be and acted like a man much older yet still set off every protective instinct in his family from the scent of his underage form. Also that they were not as seamless as a team as they perhaps liked to seem they were, if anything Klaus thought they seemed as dysfunctional as his family, if their bickering, frustrations at his resistance to torture, and underlining familiarity with each other was anything to go on.

The last thing was that they did, despite the earlier statement, know what they were doing. Both he and Ben believed he might make it out alive trusting their family came soon, his ghostly brother even supplied distractions when the onslaught of torture started to get too much... that was until the pair of them took off their masks some time after the clock above his head turned six am.

"Oh shit" Ben whispers from somewhere behind him, and Klaus concurs.

The number one thing their father had always drilled into them during training for torture situations was that masked assailants never liked to be recognised. So long as they disguised their faces you were liable to get out alive. Once they showed you their face, chances of survival plummeted.

"Dude, you've gotta get out of here" Six warns, darting around the room to search for possible exits for Klaus, as if his brother weren't strapped to a chair unable to shift an inch.

Klaus peers at him blearily through blood and sweat soaked hair, flopping into his eyes. "How the hell am I suppose to do that?"

The woman slaps him. "Stop talking and listen up, this is how it's gonna be..."

He drowns her out, choosing instead to meet Ben's panicked eyes. The large man is cocking his gun and Klaus knows he only has seconds, a minute at best, but all he can think about is how much he doesn't want Ben to have to see him die. Not like Luther had to see Ben die. He doesn't want his family to have to see his body, if these two leave it anywhere to be found, like they had to see Ben's. He doesn't want Ben to drift back into the afterlife with no other way to stay in the real world and stay tied to the family he loves, because as fucked up as Klaus was he was all Ben had.

It figured that as soon as Klaus got his life together and started to try to make things work with Diego that this, this would happen.

"Klaus!" Ben shouts as a gun goes off.

* * *

 

An obnoxious buzz interrupts her dreams, and Eudora Patch groans as she stretches out like a cat. To her left, the lump that is her Omega boyfriend moves but to her relief doesn't rise, and she takes a moment just to lean over and smell his hair and kiss his forehead.

Then she begins her morning routine.

Get dressed. Check.

Brush her hair into a neat tail. Check.

She thanks God for her boyfriend buying her a timed coffee maker for her birthday when she arrives downstairs to the kitchen and finds the steaming liquid pressed out ready for her. Breakfast is the usual deal, eggs and toast with some fruit. Her shoes are easily enough to kick on one handed, and she smiles to herself as she picks up her badge and bag along. The Alpha only comes to a stop when she realises she can't find her keys.

"Shit, shit, shit, shi- Oh. Thank you, baby" Eudora says to herself when she sees her man had put her keys on a hook by the door for her. He must have installed it the day before and she feels bad for not noticing the night before.

Maybe today was going to be a good day. Maybe she'd find the assholes with a murder and two bust up establishments under their belts, and go back to handling junkies and more minor crimes.

Eudora opens her front door and groans.

"What are you doing here?" She asks, directed more at the sky than the man lying on her front porch. Kim, her boyfriend upstairs, wasn't a jealous man but no one liked to smell their partner's ex in the doorway of their home.

All annoyance drains out of her though when she steps over Diego and sees how broken he looks. His eyes are red and his skin pallid, like he hasn't slept all night, and he's covered in bruises. When he reaches out for her coffee his hand is trembling so badly she can't help but hand it over sympathetically.

"What happened?" Patch asks, sinking down to sit next to him. "Diego, come on, talk to me"

He takes a gulp of her coffee. "I.. Um. It's uh... It's K-Klaus"

Now isn't the time to roll her eyes even though she wants to. Why was it that every time Diego was upset that Omega had something to do with it? Only, he'd never looked this torn up.

"What about him?" She coaxes gently. A thought occurs to her. "Was it him who did this?"

Her friend shakes his head. "No! No. No Klaus didn't do this. I, um, I didn't get a good look at their faces"

It takes her a minute to catch what he means and when she does she groans. "Tell me you didn't go after them. That's police business"

"It's my business now" Diego snaps, interrupting her. "They came into my house, looking for my brother, they tried to kill my family, and now..."

Eudora can't find it in herself to be angry at him for being so rude when his voice cracks. In her softest voice, she asks. "Now, what?"

"Now Klaus is gone. They, those fucking lunatics in the masks, took Klaus. He was there before they came, gone when they were"

"Are you sure? From what you've told me about Klaus he-"

"We found his blood, Eudora"

Oh. Oh shit. She says as much.

"I've been looking all night, I even went back to the house to see if my brother and sister found him or maybe he went back but no, he's not there. The only thing they found was his blood and I thought maybe you might have heard something but I guess you haven't, so I'll just be on my way..." Diego cuts off when her hand comes to rest on his shoulder, stopping his attempts to stand up.

"No, wait. You need to let the police handle this" Eudora tells him, using a voice usually reserved for victims. "Come down to the station with me, we'll file a report and get a team out. You're not equipped to-"

Two jerks out of her comfort then, suddenly standing and backing away from her. All signs of vulnerability now hidden under layers of anger. "Oh you always loved telling me what I can and can't do. You could help, you know"

"That's what I'm trying to do" Eudora replies, following him down the path and onto the street.

He shakes his head at her. "No I don't mean the paperwork bullshit, I mean my way. Just this once could you try things my way? No, you know what Patch, forget it, forget I ever came"

The detective calls after him but he takes off before she can get another word in, and Eudora's shoulders drop with a sigh.

"Eudora" A voice calls him the house. "Everything okay?"

She turns to see Kim at the door, looking tired and confused. Patch walks back up to him, clingy from having heard of her friend's mate endangered, and gives him a kiss. "Yeah, everything's fine. Go back to bed, I'll see you tonight"

Hopefully, as much as she disapproved of their bond, Diego would get to see Klaus by tonight too. She didn't like to see Diego as upset as he was, especially when the man so rarely showed his more fragile side and she'd hate it if this was all because his mate had gotten mixed up in something bad, as who knew why their two perps were at Diego's house.

Her phone goes off just as she reaches the car.

"Patch" Eudora answers, balancing her coffee on the roof. Over the phone she hears Beaman's voice, sounding exhausted. "Another one? Goddamnit. I'll be right there"

When she arrives on scene, it's to a room filled with blood soaked tools, forensics gathering up evidence, and Beaman crouched by a broken chair with an expression of profound confusion on his face that doesn't change once as they investigate the initial scene.

She misses when her biggest concern was a dealer trying to sneak drugs into the local high schools.

* * *

 

Diego doesn't announce his arrival when he gets back to the Academy, not like the first time earlier the previous night calling to know if Klaus had somehow been found or made his own way back to them.

He enters in silence and stands staring at the chandelier in the middle of the entrance lobby mulling over the last few hours. It felt like one moment everything might actually work out, with Five miraculously returned, Klaus having made headway on getting sober and the mates finally having moments together they should have been enjoying for over a decade now. But the issue was they were Hargreeves, with numbers for names, and a father who cared more about whether they knew how to take out multiple assailants than have a healthy conversation about their feelings with one another.

On his middle left finger, his Bonding Band sits and he twists the ring absentmindedly in thought. Up until only a few minutes ago parked down a side alley, the ring had lived tied to his rear view mirror close enough that it didn't dangle and it was only from feeling the loss of Klaus so acutely with fear for his safety that had Diego taking it down to wear. It hadn't seen it's place on his finger in years, put there shortly after he got the car and before he started dating Eudora. He'd figured it wouldn't be appropriate to start seeing a woman with a ring on his finger, especially when he knew Klaus had long ago sold it's counterpart for either drugs or something to eat.

The ring isn't cheap, for all his disgust in their Bond Reginald had refused to have his sons wear anything less than real rose gold, and it was bought a month after Klaus' just to make sure the public didn't guess their situation. Klaus had been delighted at the time because it meant he got to grow his hair out longer for once, long enough to cover Diego's teeth marks behind his ear. Neither of them had been sentimental about their Bond rings not like most mates were. They weren't even paired, they were just two single rings Reginald had found looked enough like traditional bonding rings and shoved them on his sons fingers for public appearances.

Why he even still had it was beyond Diego. He'd resented the ring long before he left the Academy and was no longer forced to wear it. Even looking at it now curled something ugly in his heart.

But having it on there now works because it will serve as a reminder to him to buy a real set of bonding bands when he gets Klaus back. He was going to make this work between himself and Klaus, and he knew Klaus wanted to too even though neither had said as much in words. In the Hargreeves household where talking was generally considered a waste of time better spent training, actions spoke louder.

The Alpha looks up, snapped from his reverie, when he hears and smells Luther approaching. His brother looks on edge, which Diego admits is fair given now dangerous he behaved the previous night when he got back only to be told Luther and Allison had found Klaus' blood, but Diego hasn't got any energy for fighting the wrong guy.

"Any luck?" Luther checks in, and when he sees the defeat in Two's eyes he sighs. "Right. Well... We had no luck finding Five either, he's been missing since yesterday, he won't know we were attacked. For all we know they've found him by now"

Diego huffs. "Great. Two missing guys. Some big brothers we are"

Luther looks away as ashamed as Diego feels. "How didn't we notice?"

"Because Five does his own shit, been alone too long to remember he has to tell people where he goes, and Klaus..." He trails off with a sigh.

"Klaus does this own thing too" Luther finishes. "It's lucky we found his blood"

The Alpha snaps up to glare at him. "What the hell, Luther? Lucky we found his blood. What kind of bullshit thing to say is that?"

"Well I just mean that... you know, if we hadn't we wouldn't have realised him being gone was a bad thing" The Beta rambles and Diego's hackles rise.

"A bad thing? Wait, wait, you think him being gone would otherwise be a good thing?" He's close to Luther now, anger flaring in his eyes as he glares up at his taller brother. He shoves Luther and as satisfying as it feels to do so he's not surprised the ape-man barely moves an inch. "You're an asshole. Worried about one brother all while thinkin' the other one being gone, probably dead in a ditch somewhere, is a good thing?"

Diego's voice breaks, and Luther bats away his pointing finger in annoyance. "That's not what I said, Number Two"

"Really, because that's what I just heard"

"I'm going to fix this"

The Kraken scoffs, loud and harsh and mocking. "Really, huh? Gonna go play hero, huh Luther?"

"Well what are you going to do?" Luther shoots back. "Save the day?"

"It's what I do" Diego drawls, turning away yet cursing when Luther yanks him back.

"Oh yeah, last I checked you mop floors"

Diego smacks Luther off him and lunges back before the Beta can make anymore attempts to catch hold of him.

"That is enough!" A stern voice cracks through their impending fight. Even though Luther makes no more moves, Diego still jumps a few steps out of the other's reach and keeps his fists raised ready for a strike. Dark eyes follow where Luther looks, and sees Pogo standing at the foot of the stairs shaking his head. "This house was attacked! We barely got out with our lives. Your brothers are missing and this is how you rise to the occasion?"

One stares at his feet, ashamed, but Diego meets Pogo's eyes head on with fists clenched. He finds himself wondering where Pogo was when the attackers were in the house. Apes were much stronger than Humans and far more agile, even in his advanced age Pogo could hold his own Diego knew he could, they'd all seen the ape fight in his younger years when the children still needed additional protection. Where was he when Klaus needed him?

Likely hiding in his cellar dwelling pretending he couldn't hear the bullets flying and the sounds of the people he claimed to care for crying out.

"Sorry, Pogo" Luther intones, spying at Diego when the other doesn't copy him.

Diego rolls his shoulders back, taking steps back towards the front door. Not once does he take his eyes off of Pogo's surprised face, biting back the urge to laugh at the doctor's audacity. Since when did he have the right to be shocked when one of the children he let Reginald torture stared at him with contempt?

"I'm done here" Diego tells them both, head shaking. "When I find Klaus, which I will, neither of you are seeing us ever again. You can either help me find him, and Five wherever he disappeared to, or piss off back to do whatever it is you guys do holed up in this big ugly house. I don't care either way"

It doesn't surprise him one bit that Luther checks with Pogo first before running out after Diego. It does, however, make Diego sad for the brother who never got to be his own person.

* * *

 

Eudora looks up hopefully at the perky seeming woman bearing a thick wad of notes.

"Please tell me you have something I can work with?" She pleas, it's been a painfully long day and with a third crime scene added in as many days, Eudora can feel her superiors bearing down on her every hour to reach some kind of lead.

Her colleague's blonde head nods. "I do. Labs came back from those bloods pulled from this morning's crime scene. Got a positive ID"

The detective accepts the file her colleague hands over, flipping it open to read through the report, hungry for any kind of lead. The first page is covered in graphs and information she hasn't the qualifications to decipher, so she skims past them to a print out as the other woman continues.

"Blood belongs to an Omega male by the name of Number Four" Eudora meets her colleague's frown. "Yeah I know, it's one of the Hargreeves, don't know about you but I'd started to forget they existed"

Eudora hums, taking a gulp of her fifth coffee of the day. "Any other names than just Number Four?"

"Yes, goes by the name Klaus. He was brought in a few months ago for possession and before that a whole list of other anti-social charges"

"Drugs in his system?" She asks, snatching onto the possible lead. If this was had something to do with the drugs ring in her city, it could be the break she needed. The image attached to the file is of a skinny, emaciated looking man with curly hair and sunken looking eyes lined with black. Eudora can only faintly recognise which of the Umbrella Academy he is, her preference had always been Number Three, a fellow mixed girl and absolute idol growing up. Come to think of it, in her mind's eye one of the guys looks like...

No. No way.

The name Klaus has her stomach sinking, quietly hoping the hunch was wrong. But really, what were the chances?

Laura, she thinks the woman's name is, leans forward to flip a page across to show said reports. "Historically? Yes. In the last forty-eight hours he's taken, but nothing since then"

Eudora nods slowly. With her thumb she points to a point on the list of properties in the blood simply marked [ UKNOWN ]. "And this?"

"We suspect it could be a new type of drug, since it matches nothing on our systems. We won't know until we've had a closer examination of samples found in his blood but it seems like it's some kind of pheromone blocker" Laura's rose wrinkles at the thought, and Eudora's too disgusted too to reprimand her indiscretion. "Other than that, there's just a few more things..."

The Alpha detective lets her colleague lean over again and turn the page, all too used to the lab department and their lack of social skills, and curses.

"You're kidding me" Eudora breathes, reading the final notes. "Tell me I'm reading this wrong"

Laura bites her lip, looking sad. "Nope. You're not. We ran the samples three times, came back the same each time"

"Shit"

* * *

 

Diego tries not to be an asshole and be disappointed that the one they found was Five, safe and sound scribbling frantically in his notebook in the van, he shouldn't be disappointed to see a family member unharmed. But he can't help it, not when it means he and Luther wasted time finding Five that they could have spent looking for Klaus.

Klaus who's scent hadn't resurfaced after the rain passed. No matter where he and Luther drove, a grumbling Five in the back claiming he didn't have time to help them find Klaus yet making no attempts to leave them again, he couldn't catch a whiff of Klaus' beautiful smoky aura.

It was like Klaus had suddenly disappeared off the face of the Earth. Even dead... even dead bodies still carried a smell to track.

By late evening it's Luther who suggests they reconvene and map out where they've been, and as much as he finds his brother annoying he can't deny the guy is smart, and they agree to Diego's place since Five's hunters would expect him at the mansion. The kid tries to claim he could take them if they did come back, but Diego saw him talking to a mannequin so he severely doubts Five's clarity of mind.

They make it two steps in the door of the boxing gym when Five's scathing commentary on his living choices gets cut off by a red phone being thrust under his nose by a pissed looking Al. The red cord of the phone is pulled tight to breaking point and Diego scrambles to reach the pillar it's attached to for fear of pulling it out and cutting off whoever it is calling him.

"Woman on the phone for ya, some detective" The Beta grunts, then points to his brothers. "These two ain't stayin', ya hear me Diego?"

Two shakes his head at Al with a hand over the mouth piece of the phone, assuring him that they most definitely weren't staying the night, before bringing the phone to his face. "Diego speaking"

" _Oh fuck_ "

Diego blanches when the caller swears down the phone at him, loud enough for his brothers and Al to hear, and in his peripherals Diego sees their heads snap up. He waves off the concerned look Luther shoots him and just because he can, he flips off Five for tapping his non-existent watch impatiently.

"Excuse me?" He asks, bewildered.

" _Fuerte?_ " Eudora's voice, of all people, replies.

His back straightens. "Patch?"

" _Shit, I was really hoping it wasn't you_ "

This Al overhears and Diego does his best to lean away from the uproarious laughter from the boxing gym owner so he can hear Eudora better. He doesn't know what to think of how Five seems to enjoy the ruckus Al makes, likely because it's at the expense of Diego, and instead meets Luther's wide eyes.

"You called me, Eudora. Is this about Klaus? Tell me you've found something"

Luther brightens, as hopeful as he is. Comically shorter by his side, Five tilts his chin up to indicate he's listening too.

" _I have_ " One gives a thumbs up, not noticing Five's scathing look at the childish gesture. " _And you're not going to like it_ "

The grin drops off Luther's face.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... I hate Pogo and I am not ashamed to say it.
> 
> Eudora was really, really hoping that her ex Diego wasn't the Diego Hargreeves listed as the next of kin in the file. This poor woman has no luck, but at least she's alive in this AU!
> 
> Sorry if this one seems rushed or shorter, I wanted to get something out before the weekend because I'm going to be super busy and might not have it done for my usual Monday schedule. I'd love to know what everyone thinks!! A lot have people have already guessed what's going on and I'm pretty sure after this the game is up!


	8. Chapter 8

_It concerns me what Reginald plans for the Presented children. I have aided him in various experiments upon the children and regretted it each and every time, yet it is now that I find myself at my most disturbed. Ever since their day of Presentation I have noticed the man taking an unusual interest in the dynamics between the unmated girls, Allison and Vanya, and the mated boys, Diego and Klaus, and initially did not think much of his explorations into how their Secondary Sexes impact their performance and how it affects how they behave with one another._

_But after so many years serving him I have learned to interpret much of his remarkable mind from the comments he makes to me after moments of thought watching the children sleep on the monitors. Last night he asked me a metaphorical question. What would happen with their powers when under particular... changes to their bodies._

_Reginald has put their bodies under so many stresses and changes over the last few years that I had, perhaps naively, believed he had exhausted all possible states to place his Presented children into. It is as I write this that I realise there was one 'change' left, thus far untested yet prevented by Reginald._

_Pregnancy._

_I believe he intends to allow Diego and Klaus to be together come Klaus' next Heat in three months time, and then study what impact pregnancy has over their psyche, body and bond._

_They must leave. They must follow in Allison's footsteps and leave._

_Soon._

* * *

****

**_One Month, and Four days ago._ **

The music pounds through his miserably sober head. He's running down from a good high and desperately wants something new, so Klaus made sure to conveniently lose his jacket in the crowds so he just has on a white mesh over his lithe frame and he leans on the bar making eyes at anyone who looks longer than a few seconds.

Loitering like an invisible cock block is Ben, who looks far more uncomfortable with the loud music and sweaty bodies than Klaus even though he's a ghost. He's been glaring at everyone who comes near Klaus for so long the Omega is beginning to suspect his brother has some ability to steer off a potential pull and has been holding out on him.

"If you're just going to stand there like the creepy Ring girl and not enjoy yourself, piss off" Klaus grouses, accidentally scaring off a pretty looking young man easily over a decade younger than him when the baby Alpha mistakes him as the target of Klaus' comment. "Lovingly, piss of lovingly"

Ben squints at Klaus, but then smiles with a shake of his head. "I'm your... what was it? Your book goth guardian angel in a Jake Peralta cosplay. I can't leave"

He didn't want to leave, no matter how much he couldn't stand the rave, because at times like these he didn't trust Klaus alone. Well, correction, he didn't trust other people and Klaus' inability to sniff out danger. Inability or deliberate ignorance, Ben wasn't sure, regardless he wanted to keep an eye on Klaus when his brother was in situations Ben knew were packed with people up to no good. Sure there was likely twice as many people just trying to have a good time and let loose after their day jobs but Klaus was a magnet for the one third that had all kinds of unpleasant designs on a lone Omega.

On his own, physically, Ben had little to offer in the way of protecting Klaus, but he'd found from experience that Klaus would eventually listen and get himself the fuck out of dodge if Ben screamed in his ear long enough and loud enough to do so.

Klaus opens his mouth to say something back when a warm hand touches his bicep. Hello. Here we go.

He turns with a smile and gaze through his lashes to the newcomer.

The Beta, he can smell, is surprisingly built for being one and his full lips remind Klaus of someone he'd rather not think of in that moment, but at this point Klaus is too itchy for a hit or a body to fuck him to mind too much. He's certainly not going to turn the man down when, brazenly, the Beta male holds up a bag full of pink pills.

Just beyond him, Klaus spots two girls giggling and tapping pink dots to each other's tongues, and his back straightens.

"Maybe say no" Ben offers, in an airy voice right into his ear. Klaus passes waving Ben off as a cheesy flutter like he's fanning himself.

He asks the Beta. "For moi? How much?"

The Beta leans closer than Ben would like to Klaus and he knows it's not just to hear Klaus over the racket around them. His suspicions are confirmed when the man's eyes dip down Klaus' exposed and seductively laid out form. "Hm, usually I charge fifty a pill but..."

"Don't" Ben says uselessly.

Completely ignoring him, Klaus traces a finger down the Beta's chest and once he reaches the waistband of his jeans, curls it in to tug the other man closer. His lips hover close to the dealer's ear. "I left my wallet in my jacket"

Across their impossibly close faces, the strobe light flashes with a blue overlay, and Ben thinks it makes the Beta dealer look demonic. He should know.

The dealer laughs, and Klaus sticks out his tongue expectantly. To his annoyance he gets a kiss first but takes some pleasure in the fact his harsh, wet slop of a kiss feels nothing like the gentle brush Diego usually opened with. Klaus schools the face he pulls back to something flirty when the dealer pulls away and opens the bag, taking out one delicate pill and dabs it to Klaus' awaiting tongue.

It's consistency is like rice paper and it melts almost instantly on Klaus' tongue.

"Hey, you're not an Omega are you?" The dealer suddenly asks, leaning an elbow on the bar next to Klaus. His body cages Four in.

Ben wants to hit him.

Klaus snorts. "Yeah, what's that got to do with shit?"

Beside him, his ghostly brother doesn't like the way the man hums thoughtfully and shakes his head with a dismissive laugh. The fact the dealer asked at all rings alarm bells, because dealers never usually gave a shit who took their drugs so long as they made some kind of profit.

"Nothin', nothin'" The man clearly lies, but Klaus can already feel whatever the drug was start to carry him off. Damn, that shit is good for working so fast. He doesn't mind when the dealer wraps an arm around his waist and starts to guide him away from the bar. "You're going to be a fun time"

Klaus pats his cheek. Wow... the drug worked super fast. Faster than anything Klaus has taken before. "What's it called? I like it... feel all fizzy, like a cola. Fizzy cola fun time, is me"

Ben trails after, flashing between dancing bodies as the pair weave out of the club. It bothers him that the dealer doesn't answer Klaus, at least not at first, and by the time the Beta dealer and Klaus have reached the door and passed the bouncers Ben has already decided he's putting an end to this fast. A ghostly pimp, Klaus had called him once, deciding who Klaus was allowed to go home with.

"Why don't you do your jobs?" Ben shouts at the bouncer's stoic faces, then grunts in annoyance and flashes outside where the dealer is practically carrying Klaus now. He doesn't want them getting too far from public. "Klaus! Klaus, stop! Don't go with him"

Klaus blinks at him over the dealer's shoulder. It's barely been a few minutes and Ben can see a glazed over look in his brother's eyes that he dreaded. "But I gotta pay the man"

"No! Listen to me right now, Klaus. You can go home with anyone else, literally anyone I'm giving you free reign of the whole club. Just. Not. Him"

Assuming Klaus was talking to him, the dealer chuckles and his breath clouds in the cool night air. "Yeah, you gotta baby"

Whining like a child Klaus does a roll in the dealer's grip, and when it loosens in surprise Klaus stumbles away with heels clacking as he moves. He's barely made it two steps before the dealer lunges and snatches him up by the waist, stealing breath Ben doesn't have from the Horror.

In his stomach, They roll in anger but remain trapped by death.

"Hey, no manhandling... yet" Klaus adds on the end, pouting at the man as he swings Klaus up onto his shoulder. He doesn't like that. Luther used to hoist him up like his when he claimed he was too tired to walk back to the Academy after their escapades to Griddy's, and even though he doesn't particularly adore his Beta brother, even in his drug haze Klaus hates the way this taints his memory of those times. Although maybe it isn't that, maybe it's the fact that his floating, buzzing sensation was souring as quickly as it came to him, and he was starting to feel nauseous. Yeah. Yeah that's it. "Wait, wait, don't dig your shoulder in my tummy I might puke on you. So not sexy"

"Klaus!" Ben shouts, running around the pair in circles as they make their way down the street, too far from the club, and make a left turn down an alleyway. "Klaus, you need to get out of this. I can't help you. You need to get yourself out"

He doesn't feel high anymore. He feels hot, burning, and like he's going to heave up all the drinks he'd downed in the hours before.

Klaus slaps the Beta's shoulder. "Look, buddy. I'm not feeling it anymore so can we like... rain check? I was lying about my wallet in my jacket, my cash is in my pants. Put me down and I'll pay you. Sorry to be a buzzkill"

He smacks the man harder, wiggling a little this time.

"Hey! Put me down I'm serious, dude. I'm going to puke on you if you don't put me down" He groans, pursing his lips, and bats a fist on the stranger's back. He has no intention of paying the man anything, not when his shitty drugs did nothing but make him feel funny for short while, and then just pure, burning misery. Klaus can't even try to convince himself he feels high anymore.

Whatever spell the pill had for the last ten minutes has broken.

Klaus meets Ben's eye when the man, thus far completely ignoring him, stops by one of the many cars parked down the alleyway. The Omega is dropped in a heap on the cold, hard ground and Klaus waits a beat for the dealer to be distracted by fishing his keys out of a pocket within his jacket before lifting up one skinny leg, aiming and then kicking out as hard as he can straight into the man's knee from the side. It cracks satisfyingly and the Beta screams.

"Rollin', rollin'" Klaus murmurs as he does just that, avoiding the Beta's flailing limbs. So long alone has taught him to handle himself no matter how stoned he got or drunk he felt. And no matter how rotten, Klaus figures as he trips over himself to stand and start off like a greyhound down the alleyway.

He hears but doesn't look back to see, the dealer call out after him and fall to the ground with a cry, he just runs away with a single minded determination learned from Reginald's strict regimes and weekly tests of Klaus' Omega racing speed. Klaus can't see Ben anywhere but knows the moment he stops his Beta brother will be beside him, as even in life Six had never been able to keep up with any of their siblings let alone Klaus, and sure enough once Klaus is back near the club and under the protection of public and streetlights, familiar kind eyes are there for him.

"Let it happen" Ben tells him, and Klaus hauls over and vomits down a drain.

He drops back onto his butt and wipes his mouth, groaning. His skin feels as if it's on fire and the cold air of February is doing nothing to ease that. "You know what I want?"

"Hm?" Ben hums, sitting beside Klaus and cringing at the wet mix on the Omega's shirt.

Klaus grins, but it's wobbly. "Waffles"

* * *

 

"Oh no, honey" The waitress says the second Klaus steps through the door with a clink of the bell.

Klaus, now shivering all over and feeling as if someone had thrown him into a volcano, reels back. "Rude"

The place is practically empty except for them, with only two customers dotted around and they've both turned in their seats to stare at him with the same shock as the coffee pot wielding waitress. She smells like an Omega, same for one of the men, but the older man, easily old enough to be Klaus' father, smells... smells fantastic.

"I'm sorry sweetie but you can't be in here, it's against company policies" She tells him, rushing to put her coffee pot down on the nearest table so her hands her free to usher him out. Klaus lets her, too distracted by eyeing the ugly old Alpha who looked offensively disgusted by Klaus, and in his peripherals Ben's frown mirrors Klaus' mood on the whole thing.

She sits him down on the sidewalk outside and turns to make sure the diner door is closed. Then she crouches beside him, like he's a little boy, and her hand feels beautifully cool on his overheated shoulder. "Do you have an Alpha I can call, sweetie? Or a chaperone?"

Why did he need either of those?

"Sweetie?" She asks again, nudging him gently to catch his attention.

"I'm so hot" Klaus whimpers and for once he doesn't mean it in reference to how attractive he knows he is.

She coos and hugs him, but the angle makes it awkward. Especially when his face ends up smashed to her breast.

"I know, sweetie, I know it's not a nice time. Do you have a chaperone?" Her voice is so soothing, so calm, like a mother even know Klaus is pretty sure she's late forties at best.

This time Klaus makes sure to voice his question. Why?

The waitress briefly looks uncomfortable, at loss for words, them she rubs her hands down his arms and Klaus wants to cry at how wonderfully cool they are on his painfully burning skin. "Because sweetie it's not safe for an Omega in Heat to be out alone like this, especially not at night, all kindsa people could hurt you"

He wants to question her Omegaism. Hey sister, don't you know you and I are allowed to go where we like in these new, dawning times? But something else takes centre front, to both him and Ben.

"What?" Ben questions, unheard.

"I'm not in Heat" Klaus frowns and wipes sweat from his brow. Huh. "My Heat isn't for another... two months"

He even counts on his fingers. Klaus barely kept track of anything but he definitely kept track of That. So he knew how long to leave it before biting the bullet and slinking off to Diego's place, hopefully too far gone into the Heat to have to suffer through any painful conversations with the Alpha he's sure doesn't want him. Even if he had lost count, Ben would have reminded him or Diego would have appeared, somehow finding him like he always did, to pick him up.

Her cold, soft hand rests on his forehead and he leans into it. Leans into the comfort of an older, wiser, not-in-Heat Omega. She's safe. She's nice. She's wise. His Omega instincts tell him.

But she's not an Alpha. Only an Alpha could make this burning go away.

"Oh no" Ben groans, covering his face with his hands.

"Dear, I'm afraid you're most definitely in Heat" The Omega waitress disagrees. "Listen if you don't have a chaperone can I drive you home? I'll just have to let my colleague out back know but I really don't feel comfortable just... leaving you alone like this"

Klaus looks desperately up at Ben.

"That drug. That's why he cared if you were an Omega or not. It must mess with your cycle" Ben deduces, looking ill. "Take her offer, Klaus. Get her to drive you to Diego"

"Okay" He says quietly, too sick and burning up to kick up a fuss to Ben. Klaus looks at the waitress, at her soulful brown eyes and friendly dark features, and thinks of Diego's similarly lovely chocolate eyes. Klaus' voice croaks as he speaks. "Yeah, please"

* * *

 

The look on the waitress' face is laughable, or at least would be if Klaus wasn't feverish and gone on the need for Diego. He lies to her, telling her he lives in an apartment above the boxing gym and waits around the corner, pretending to head to a door that led to said apartments, and as soon as he hears her drive off Klaus darts back around front and paws at the lock.

It's a simple design that's easy enough to unlock once he bends a bobby pin yanked from his hair into a suitable enough shape. Were his head clearer he wouldn't have needed Ben to talk him through it, reminding him of all the nuances and reminding him to be patient with it, and he would have taken a moment to think how funny it was that a man like Diego lived somewhere so easy to break into. Sure, Al was in charge of his own establishment, but it would be far fetched to think Diego hadn't pestered the man about better security.

The only reason Klaus has to break in at all is because Diego is out. He can only smell the faintest traces of his mate, faded and old, and Ben yelps when Klaus collapses a few steps into the gym.

"Klaus, get up, come on you're almost there" Klaus whines in response. Ben sighs. "I know, I know it hurts... But you're so close now, all you have to do is get to Diego's ap... Boiler room and then you can rest on something more comfortable than the floor"

Ben doesn't know. Ben was a Beta in life. Which meant he'd been spared all the discomfort and confusing developments that came with presenting either as an Omega or an Alpha. Ben, like Luther, had never woken up in the night with the urge to rearrange everything in the room and steal as many blankets as they could, or find themselves wanting to lick all the food in the snack bowl to claim it as their own. Ben didn't know the pure agony of going through an entire Heat with nothing, not even modern toys, or experience the terror of going into an Alpha Haze and waking up hours later to find you've attacked anyone who came close to you.

But he does have a point, the thought of the boiler room smelling potently of Diego sounded much nicer than the stench of stale sweat and dirt currently filling Klaus' nose. Diego hadn't cleaned the floors before leaving for what Klaus assumes is a patrol and in a brief burst of clarity through his Heat Klaus finds the strength to haul his heavy feeling body up and stumble out back.

He drops straight onto Diego's bed once he's close enough and feels a cool breath over his hair, Ben trying to comfort him, and lets out a pained whine as he tangles himself as much as he can in Diego's sheets. They smell beautifully of him.

It's a whirring, indistinct mess of pleasure and crying himself hoarse with it for hours after that, when Diego bursts through the door and Klaus runs up to meet him. The first time is rough and hard against the wall of the boiler room, the pair of them too desperate to travel the short distance to the bed and Klaus having peeled off his leather pants in discomfort long before Diego arrived back home. And when Diego's knot eases, they're given a few minutes until a second wave hits, surprising them both when Klaus usually only had one.

After the third wave, slow, exhausted and moaning in soft sounds into each other's mouths, Klaus hears it.

He hears Diego come with Klaus' name on his lips and hears the Alpha's breath in his ear when his mate drops his full weight onto the Omega. Klaus hears with eyes closed and tearing up from relief that another wave never hits, he's too raw and tired for another round of that biological curse, Diego start whispering to him about what he wanted for them. He thinks Klaus was asleep. Hell, Klaus wants to be.

Diego's voice is cracked and low as he tells the man he assumes is sleeping how he wanted to buy real bonding bands, how he wanted to marry Klaus and get to tell him every day how much he loves him. They'd find somewhere to live far away from their father and their overbearing siblings with their judgemental glares and burn books.

Klaus feels Diego kiss his temple when he tells the Omega feigning sleep that he has to get the floors mopped before the gym opens, which now dawn has broken is a matter of approximately thirty minutes away.

He feels his own heart race as he jumps up the moment Diego is gone and push through mating exhaustion to flee the scene. The plan is, as he's running away, to never see Diego again, to never burden his would be brother with his existence again not when Diego could find someone far better to spend his life with. Maybe he'd use the money down his pants to buy a ticket to any city the buses would take him to and from there never stop moving around, because he knows Diego would eventually start tracking him. But somewhere between being surprised Diego didn't follow immediately after him and Ben swatting his incorporeal hand through his head, full rant mode, for being such an idiot for running away Klaus makes a choice.

A choice that, eventually, would end up saving the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PREGANANANANT??


	9. Chapter 9

>   
>  _"It's Vanya, wasn't it?"_
> 
> _Vanya looks up, shocked to hear her name, and stares straight at Helen through the mirror in the ladie's room. Warm brown eyes she blushes to say she's fixated over for nearly three years are looking at her with curiosity in them, and for a second Vanya wonders if Helen is somehow mistaken._
> 
> _Helen's eyebrows raise and Vanya's brain catches up, sparking her to turn around to face the other woman._
> 
> _"Oh, um, yeah. Yeah, it's Vanya" She says, as quiet as ever._
> 
> _The Alpha seems uncomfortable suddenly and Vanya wonders if she's managed to mess up something seemingly so simple. Her thoughts are silenced when Helen comes closer, with an aborted gesture to reach for Vanya._
> 
> _"You smell different" Helen tells her frank. As blunt as Helen had always been. "You smell..."_
> 
> _Vanya holds her breath._
> 
> _"Like wood shavings" Helen finishes, nose wrinkled like the scent disgusts her and Vanya feels herself shrink. "It doesn't suit you"_
> 
> _She doesn't know what to say to that, so she turns on her heels and all but runs out of the bathroom, ignoring Helen's stumbling calls of her name finished off with a loud curse mulled when the door swings shut between them._

* * *

 

"Klaus!" Ben shouts as the gun goes off.

The only reason he and every other spirit in the room don't have collective heart attacks is owed to already being dead. He finds he isn't the only one crying out at the loud sound, reaching to help a man in a plane of being unreachable to them, they can't touch anything but they all try.

They need not have worried though, because within a split second Ben realises the sound wasn't the gun firing at all. There's no morbid debris of his brother's brain decorating the room and no horrifying slump of his body over the arms he's strapped to. The only blood that flies anywhere comes from the man's hand when the gun suddenly explodes in his grip and shrapnel flies into the swearing faces of both Klaus' torturers, and Ben is in front of Klaus instantly to check him over for any horrible flecks of metal in his face too. He's relieved, albeit confused, to see that aside from pre-existing injuries from what he'd been put through that night Klaus' wide eyed face is clear. Behind him the man wielding the gun is howling in pain, and oddly ranting about cheap gear from 'management'.

"Get your ass in the bathroom and sort yourself out" The woman snaps, plucking shrapnel from her skin like it's nothing. Klaus peers over Ben's shoulder as the man passes and sees that the man's hand is mostly ruined from his gun exploding in it, he has no idea how the man is still conscious from the blood loss he must be going through and mutely thinks that the stranger has a better pain tolerance than he did.

Both her hands go behind her, and Klaus yanks against his bindings desperately. He doesn't expect anything to happen so it doesn't just shock her and Ben when the arms of the chair suddenly crack and splinter, giving him the chance to slip the ropes free and duck to do the same for his legs.

A heel cuts his cheek as the woman kicks him across the face.

"No, you don't you little freak" She snarls at him, a gun in one hand and her other reaching to grab his hair. If she wasn't a bizarre void of scent Klaus imagined she would be a particularly scary Alpha. "Ought'a ask for a raise taking the both of you out"

For a split second Klaus thinks she means Ben, then remembers with a hysterical giggle she means Five instead. The brother they had questioned him over. Figured. She fires the gun when her attempts to grab him by the hair fail and Klaus isn't going to sit back and wonder how she missed at such close range, neither is she by the way she swears and fires again. Once more, she misses.

With his legs free Klaus dives behind him to dodge what has now become a hale of bullets, since the woman's larger colleague had reemerged from the bathroom with his hand balled up in bandages and his other firing off rounds from a second gun, and scrambles for the vent he finds down by the table. It's hardly the door but he wasn't about to question anything, and gives a cheer when it opens for him with the barest tug.

"Get him!" Someone screeches, and Klaus is half way through the vent when he feels hands grabbing onto his ankles.

Ben's calling out his name again, urging him on, and he kicks. The grip on his ankles disappears with a resounding crash and Klaus wastes no more time. He pushes the briefcase, why there was a briefcase hidden within he doesn't know and doesn't care, along the clanging vents. He feels like he's moving faster than he ought to be but that isn't something he's going to complain about.

In a blur of crawling, then running, then diving onto the nearest bus just about to take off from the street he runs out onto to avoid the firing of yet more bullets, Klaus finds that he's holding the random briefcase close to his chest and it has become his grounding to reality.

He doesn't let himself relax until the bus is several blocks away.

"Klaus? Hey Klaus, it's okay. You're safe now. Someone called the police, the gun shots must have been where people drew the line" Ben's voice says near by, but Klaus can only stare vacantly ahead with his fingers absently playing with the buckles of the briefcase. "Why they couldn't have called hours ago when you were crying out for help..."

Ben cuts off abruptly when in a burst of wind and electricity, his brother disappears.

"... Klaus? Klaus!?"

* * *

 

"Shit!" Cha Cha shouts, watching the skinny fucker disappear from reach on a damn bus of all things. She doesn't have time to dwell though, because she hears sirens and with only a quick glance down the street behind her lights are rising over the horizon.

She and Hazel needed to head back to headquarters, get the dumb ass some proper medical attention, and then get back out there after the brothers. In her pocket is still, balled up, the order that came through barely ten minutes earlier: Eliminate Klaus Hargreeves.

Now she and Hazel had no idea whether the kid they had was Klaus but by that point the pair had been itching for a kill and they figured the last name was right. Should have figured though that if Five was hard to kill then so would his siblings. What she and Hazel assumed was a misfired gun was clearly not, not when the freak was able to crush his own chair, deflect bullets with some freaky mind shit and kick her and Hazel back to smack against the opposite wall.

Hazel was right, they needed some kind of pay rise for this. Extenuating circumstances indeed.

"Get in the car" Cha Cha barks up at Hazel, who's hobbling down the stairs. "Where's the briefcase?"

Hazel, looking pale from blood loss, shakes his head at her. "Gone, that guy must've took it with him. You see where he went?"

With a growl of annoyance, Cha Cha yanks open the driver's side door and gets in. "Yeah, he bailed on a bus. We'll drive to the next bus stop, flag it down and take it back. You know this would never have happened if you'd just kept the thing with us like we're suppose to!"

She doesn't even wait for him to close the passenger door before she's spinning out of the parking lot and out onto the street. Police sirens follow them. She doesn't speed, careful to keep it as casual as possible, and hopes with a grinding of her teeth that the police hadn't gotten close enough yet to notice them leaving the very place they were no doubt going to. In the back of her mind she doesn't like how Hazel hasn't tried to defend himself or talk about his sore wrist from carrying the briefcase and casts him an assessing look.

"Hold on gotta take a detour" She snaps at Hazel, slapping him for good measure when it looks like he's going to pass out, and then takes a sharp left instead of straight over the cross roads ahead where the bus had gone down. Cha Cha hears Hazel mumble something under his breath, and then he's out. "Shit!" She screams again, punching the wheel.

At least she knew the bus route. They'd have witnesses to pluck from.

* * *

 

Luther stares at the fake eye in Five's hands and then looks up to the expression on his brother's face. Each time he finds himself at a loss of what to say or do. After being told of the end of the world coming he could give himself a break this time, being shocked from the news, but it feels to him like that's no excuse. He ought to be able to fix things for Five, the man trapped in a child's body who just wanted to save their family. He'd spent four years on the moon he can't have imagined what it was like for Five.

He's spared from needing to say a thing when Diego returns abruptly from the police station. Luther perks up despite the dramatic door slam, eager for whatever news Detective Patch had that she couldn't tell Diego over the phone, but his smile soon drops off his face when he recognises the look on Diego's face.

"Piece of shit" Diego snarls at Five, who scrambles back on the bed to get away from the furious Alpha. "Do you have any idea what you just did?"

Luther intercepts whatever Diego was planning on doing to Five and wraps his arms around his brother, lifting him clean off the ground. He feels an Alpha's strength batting at him, but that was nothing against his own super strength. Four times stronger, Luther held on to Diego through the wriggling.

"Get your ape hands off of me!" Diego shouts, but there's an edge to it. Like he's trying not to cry.

The Beta sighs. "I can do this as long as it takes you to calm down."

He hears Diego take a breath and mutter 'fine', and smiles faintly. He puts Diego down but keeps his arms up just in case Two lunges again.

"Now, wanna tell us what you're talking about?"

"When those guys in masks attacked the Academy looking for him" He points at Five, hard enough Luther thinks Five fights back a flinch. "They took Klaus. Police responded to gun shots this morning and you know what they found? Blood, lots of it. Most of it Klaus'. But that's not even the worst thing... not even the worst thing"

All the colour has drained from Luther's face as he watches Diego, with eyes glinting with tears, trail off and turn away rubbing a hand over his face, and he glances back at Five to see the Boy's face pinched and pained. He thinks then that the guilt must be crushing Five especially after what he has found out about Five's life before he dropped into their courtyard.

"What?" Five asks. "What's the worst thing, Diego?"

Klaus' body found near by? Oh god please no, Luther couldn't handle losing another brother. Ben's memory still caused him agony every time thoughts strayed to his gentle, bookish brother.

"None of your goddamn business" Diego croaks, leaning his forehead on the middle beam to compose himself.

Luther swallows. "Is he alive?"

"They don't know. There wasn't... there wasn't a body there. Just a lot of blood. They tortured him, Luther" The brothers can see Diego's defences going back up, sobering and hardening to diamond, and Luther wishes Diego wouldn't.

Just once he'd like to be the kind of brother Diego felt like he could break down in front of, get it off his chest and feel some semblance of better afterwards. But he wasn't, neither was Five. So Diego was just bottling it back up to explode later on.

Realising Diego wasn't going to talk anymore, Luther turns to Five. "Who are they, Five?"

"They work for my former employer: A woman called The Handler. She sent them to stop me. They must have taken Klaus to try and get my whereabouts out of him" Five explains, shaking his head.

"Which he wouldn't know" Luther summarises with a sigh.

Diego straightens. "He wouldn't have told them even if he did. I'm going to go find Klaus and then I'm going to make them pay"

Luther says nothing, even if he thinks finding Klaus alive might be an impossibility now. Five on the other hand speaks up, calling after Diego as the Alpha heads up the stairs.

"That would be a mistake, Diego. They've killed people far more dangerous than you"

Diego glowers at Five from the doorway, and before he leaves, says: "Yeah, we'll see about that"

 _Shit._ Luther thinks. He thinks it again when he turns back around and Five has disappeared.

One day he'd be able to keep his family altogether.

* * *

 

When Klaus arrives home, it's to silence. 

After so long surrounded by noises of all kinds. Explosions. Screaming. Shouting. Idle chatter. He finds the silence strangely peaceful, if only for a short while until he reaches the stairs and the ghosts of the mansion seem to realise all at once he's back and crowd in. 

He can tell without looking around that Dave isn't with them and neither is Ben. The Omega hasn't seen his brother in so long he nearly cried when Ben wasn't immediately back with him the second he came back to 2019, and he feels tears burn his eyes again when within the Academy's walls Ben still hasn't been able to make his way back just yet. It would only be a matter of time, before long Ben would sense his return and arrive, or just stroll in with one of their siblings he'd stalked in Klaus' absence.

Klaus wanders upstairs and beelines for the bathroom, knowing what he wants right now is a bath to wash off the blood and mud from his skin.

The bath is half full and his top half completely stripped off when his nostrils flare with the floral scent Diego carried with him. This time Klaus does cry.

How many times had he thought about that smell? How many times had he longed to see Diego again and apologise for a dozen or more petty things they'd fought about, and to apologise for not leaving a note when he'd ran out in a panic, all because Klaus didn't know how to handle being told how much his Alpha loved him. 

He braces himself on the tub edge when Diego's voice calls out his name, and he hears his mate thunder loudly up through the house to follow his scent. He had hoped he'd have been able to get himself cleaned up before Diego saw him again but none of that's important anymore, every concern he had over washing up disappears when the bathroom door creaks with Diego pushing it open, and the Alpha doesn't wait a second longer before he's rushing forward to embrace Klaus from behind.

Klaus hugs the arms around his waist and turns his cheek into Diego's lips that kiss up his neck and over his bite.

"Oh my god, I was so worried. I was so fucking worried, Klaus. They found blood, they found your blood" Diego gushes, pulling away only to turn Klaus around and hold his face. Klaus can tell Diego doesn't even notice the mud and filth all over Four because Diego's sweet eyes are on his own green ones, and like this Klaus can see how earnestly Diego is crying. It's a rare sight, one only a handful of people had ever seen, and Klaus kisses Diego to try and make him stop crying because he can't stand seeing Diego upset.

Four months away would do that to a person. Make them sentimental. 

"Klaus" Diego chokes out when they part. "Klaus, the police, they tested your blood from the crime scene. They told me you're..."

The Alpha looks down and Klaus' breath hitches when he sees Diego's eyes widen in shock. 

"Yeah" He croaks out finally, speaking for the first time since getting back to the twenty-first century. "Time travel's a bitch, huh?"

He presses his forehead to Diego's as they both look down at his swollen midsection, still small but undeniable to anyone with a clue and a brain cell. Klaus watches Diego stroke his bare hands over the bump, goosebumps rising on his skin at the familiar and long missed sensation of his Alpha's warm touch, and he covers them with his own. 

"For the record, I had no idea" Klaus defends. "I literally only found out a couple of hours ago"

Diego laughs, wet and pained, and kisses him. Klaus melts into it.

"Same" Diego replies against his lips. "Same. But um, time travel?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helen's Alpha brain: sweet Omega smell bad. not like.  
> Helen: yo Vanya you stink  
> Helen's Alpha brain: IDIOT!
> 
> so!! here we are, our boys are reunited and YEEEEE klaus is pregnant. He's five months along post Vietnam, obviously he wasn't there for as long as he was in canon, and I'll explain more about that in the next chapter and such. I feel like Diego isn't the type who'd tell Luther and Five "oh yeah klaus is pregnant", especially since he's not seen Luther in twelve years and Five in seventeen. Hey he's a private guy. 
> 
> I used to have a schedule for uploads but alas I'm a moron who cannot keep to them, so updates will come as and when I get them done, so they might pick up in speed yay
> 
> I'd love, love, love to know what you all think!!

**Author's Note:**

> Dynamics:
> 
> Alphas - Allison & Diego  
> Betas - Luther, Ben & Five (Five is a unique case, which will get explained later on)  
> Omegas - Klaus & Vanya


End file.
